In The Art
by Shark Tricks
Summary: Cameron dies from a mysterious malfunction while a complex series of seemingly unrelated events hold the secret to her rebirth.
1. Prelude

**Peru 10,000 years BC  
****Tiahuanaco before the Age of Puma Punku and the Chavín de Huántar**

The ancient Chavins surveyed the quinoa fields waiting for the sun to set and the rise of the black moon. This night had been a long time coming. For the first time in generations warring tribal factions had united in what would soon become one of the world's oldest Neolithic civilizations.

Hundreds of people stood atop the hills and watched as the fields turned to an amber gold while the sun disappeared behind the Cordillera Blanca Mountains. Tomorrow morning the first quinoa harvest of this newly forming civilization would begin.

As darkness filled the heavens the tribal leaders turned to the area in the sky where the black moon rested and with their torches made circular motions around its hidden circumference and chanted: _Lanzón mandi Kilya dorma Inti disperti pasperi al Teraj axi mundi._ Lanzón guide the moon god's dreams; the sun god's light, bring prosperity and peace to the god of the earth and to the underworld.

After several hours of chants and prayers the Chavins left the hills and returned to the campesino village in a parade of torchlight. Upon returning to their huts they each made personal offerings to their gods and ended the night with a journey to the dreamscapes.

In the middle of the night the ground trembled waking the villagers who were roused more by the cries of their frightened children than the tremors of the quake. It was not uncommon in this age for the ground to shake. The ancients had grown accustomed to what they interpreted as the footsteps of the Lanzón.

The next day the people of Tiahuanaco awoke to perfect weather. The temperature was mild, ceiling unlimited and glistening.

One of the ancients named Tjajago squinted his eyes as he, his wife and two sons left their hut to join in the great harvest. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the sunlight. As soon as they had he realized something was wrong, instead of an orderly procession of workers making their way across the hillcrest to the fields, people were running and gathering at the top of the hill. There was a flurry of commotion as most of the Chavins fell to their knees.

Tjajago and his family hurried to the top of the hill. Those who were still standing pointed frantically in the direction of the quinoa fields. Tjajago was afraid to look at first, but when he did, what he and his family saw are what we call crop circles today. They were enormous and extended across the entire harvest; flattened and displaced quinoa depicted the avatars of Kilya, Inti, Teraj, and most prominently of all the Lanzón.

On the other side of the world near the Jordon River, The Village of Palms was experiencing the same phenomenon - crop circles appearing in the wheat fields of ancient Africa. This was the birthplace of another Neolithic civilization called Jericho and like Puma Punku destined to become one of the oldest continuously inhabited areas of the world.

Three thousand years after the appearance of crop circles in these two distant and unique regions of the world, the age of the pyramids would take rise among the expansionist cultures of the Egyptians in Africa and the Mayans of South America.

**In the not too distant future and approximately 12,000 years later**

The elderly woman's riveting gaze reflected the blue sky as a dust cloud stirred up by a combine harvester caught her attention. She watched it evolve into a chiindii, raising her eyes a level from behind screen door until she saw what she was looking for. "A good spirit," she said to herself nodding in approval, "What I wouldn't give for a little air conditioning right about now _good spirit_." She almost laughed while swirling her finger clockwise in the air, but she wasn't really one for laughing. She never indulged in it; at least for not as long as she could remember, any laughter or happiness she allowed herself would always be dealt with behind her steadfast yet sorrowful veneer.

One of her true indulgences was the triumph of remembering, and reliving what she could of her tumultuous life over and over again in her mind, as if somehow she could bring back and change the past with pure thought alone. And there was her painting, although she didn't really consider herself much of an artist she had mastered it like a prodigy. She watched the good spirit until it reverted back into a cloud of wheat particles and dust taking its place behind the harvester as it chewed a path through the field of gold. She looked away from her distraction, her eyes pulling back crossing the gravel road she turned to focus the remainder of her attention on navigating her sparsely furnished cabin. Oddly enough for a woman her age there were no pictures, no hints of family or shrines filled with the faces of grandchildren. There were only the subjects in her paintings.

She steadied herself, although she was incredibly fit for her age; she was losing her battle with mortality. She worked her way over to the book shelf where she kept her journals and removed one. She then walked into the adjoining room, sat down at the kitchen table opening the hardbound cover and turned to the first blank page. She tried to make an entry, but today her hands trembled and she had trouble holding onto the pen. Some days it was like this. "Cancer my foot," She denounced "it's damned arthritis that's killing me! If I only knew then what I know now." She argued with the stillness of isolation, "It's been ages since Judgment Day should have come - but nothing. I'm still here - whats left of me!" She surrendered and slapped the journal shut, "To hell with it!" she cursed in a lamented gasp.

Sarah fought off the pity. ...hated it. It was not in her vocabulary. But she had become nobody's hero; living out her existence in this unrewarding life. She thought back to a time when when she had a reason - she knew there once was a reason, but for her the details often blurred like a landscape beneath a sweltering horizon; a symptom of the advancing stages of dementia. In reality, Sarah hadn't made a journal entry for years, she just didn't know it.

In the heat of the moment Sarah grew agitated. A fading mind, she thought to herself, is a marriage with death. "Bullshit!" she said angrily, "I'm not done, damn it! I still remember! I have more to do!" This was her routine she'd repeat four or five times a day. It had become an excercise in futility. She felt trapped. But something was different, this time she thought a new thought, breaking the hopeless cycle. I feel like a rat in a maze! A lab rat! Sarah rose up from the table and went back to the bookcase where her past resided. She looked to one of her paintings and then searched her chronicles. "A lab rat", she said to herself, "that sounds just about right!"

Finally after all this time a memory broke through the merciless fog. Sarah ran her fingers back and forth across the row of journals and retrieved the volume where it resided as if she'd written it yesterday. She looked back to the likeness in the painting and she spoke to it, "It's here John!"

**From the Journal of Sarah Connor**

Mark Twain once wrote about life following genesis and called it "Eve's Diary" in the opening sequence Eve ponders her reason for being, "I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived yesterday. That is as it seems to me. And it must be so, for if there was a day-before-yesterday I was not there when it happened, or I should remember it. It could be, of course, that it did happen, and that I was not noticing.

Very well; I will be very watchful now, and if any day-before-yesterdays happen I will make a note of it. It will be best to start right and not let the record get confused, for some instinct tells me that these details are going to be important to the historian some day. For I feel like an experiment, I feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person to feel more like an experiment than I do, and so I am coming to feel convinced that that is what I AM-an experiment; just an experiment, and nothing more."

What is it about this quote from a story written as posthumous love-letter for Livy, Mark Twain's wife who died in June 1904, that it casts such a vivid reflection of myself when I peer into it?


	2. Most Gods Throw Dice

**Summer 2007**

Sarah Connor completed a round of chin-ups and lowered herself and exhaled. She picked up a towel and wiped the sweat from her face and upper torso. Her workout routine was designed to achieve peak resilience and stamina. It was a unique discipline yielding her desired equipoise. Her body remained shapely and deceptively feminine - even alluring, yet was as hard as nails.

Sarah realized early on she could never achieve the natural upper body strength of a male; to try would only add undesirable bulk to her framework and slow her down, but with the perfect balance of flexibility and tone she could channel an attacker's brute strength to her advantage. It had served her well especially when it came to defending against the advanced tactics taught to the military elite, and more recently discovered in the baseline programming found in the algorithms of a T-888's neural net processor.

She bunched up the sweaty cloth and tossed it into the clothes hamper and in the same motion she picked up the fresh bath towel waiting on her bed and headed for the shower.

After a few moments of adjusting for the perfect blend of hot and cold water she pulled off her tank top and started to slip out of her gray workout shorts when she sensed movement just outside her bedroom door. Then she saw it; just within the range her peripheral vision, a silhouette hurried down the hall. She was no longer alone and she was certain it wasn't John or Cameron. She needed to get to her guns. Sarah quickly surveyed the bedroom and took a calculated risk. She leapt sliding across the hardwood floor and made her way under her bed where she kept a small weapons cache hidden in the box spring.

Sarah's forearms, thighs and knees turned beet red from friction burns as she flipped over on her back and reached for two nine-millimeters. She retrieved both weapons, cocking them making sure both had bullets in the chamber. She held an ear to the floor trying to pick up the vibrations of footsteps, but there were none. Yet she could hear what sounded like the rustle of metal coming from one of the outer rooms. If this was a T she needed to come up with a plan, two guns wouldn't be enough…

She quickly put the guns down for and reached into the box spring for some of the C-4 and a mercury detonator. Rapidly she affixed it the C-4 to the side of the bed panel attached the detonator and armed it under the bed sheet, and all without a moment to spare.

A dark figure appeared in the doorway and crossed from one side of the room to the other as if it were a ghost. From Sarah's vantage point all she could see were the silk shoes worn by ancient elite Chinese assassins seemingly floating across the hardwood floor, although she did not make the connection. Eye movement was all she allowed herself, and her eyes followed the intruder as it entered the bathroom to inspect the running shower. Sarah held both guns cross armed as if she were in a pharaoh's tomb and then using her back muscles spun herself out from under the bed, but the movement betrayed her location before she was clear. The Chinese warrior saw her and almost instantly a device sprung from its hands as if it were a serpent's strike.

Like a lightening bolt, Sarah felt a burning pain piercing through her entire body. The intruder had unleashed an ancient Chinese chain whip on her, its blade cutting through the arch of her foot and protruding though her instep, blood gushed from the open wounds. The attacker spun the ancient device wrapping it around both her ankles, and with a wicked jolt began to drag her in its direction, her face crashed against the polished oakwood breaking her nose; a geyser of crimson red smeared the surface of the floor behind her.

Sarah was in agonizing pain. She trembled fighting wildly against her aggressor; she let loose a stream of profanities and as soon as she was facing upwards again she lit up the room with hot lead and gun smoke firing off all thirty rounds into what looked like an ancient Chinese warrior, sending it crashing through the shower doors and shattering glass in all directions.

In shock and with a surge of adrenaline Sarah pulled herself up and unwound the chain whip from around her ankles, she hesitated only fractionally and then screaming yanked the blood covered barb through her foot. She held her head back, gained as much composure she could, grabbed one the handguns and scurried across the floor. She made her way to the jamb of the hall doorway and pulled herself up in a sitting position. She reached under the chifforobe next to her and freed a loaded clip. Heavily hyperventilating she released the empty clip and reloaded trying to control her breathing. She held the gun up in a two handed stance and shaking uncontrollably she tried to keep it aimed at the bathroom's doorway.

Whatever this thing was, it was stirring again and coming around. Sarah forced herself to rationalize her predicament, if this was a T, then why the costume? If it wasn't then what was it? No human could withstand being shot point-blank with thirty consecutive rounds. The only thing Sarah was certain of was that she was not its primary target, it was John. She wasn't going to let this thing get to her boy. She would do whatever it took to keep that from happening. She fought in futility to steady her aim, but did not fire as the creature sprung back to life and turned swiftly in a face off. But instead of attacking her, it too seemed to be sizing up the situation, and with its eyes firmly locked onto Sarah's, it made no other sudden movements. It slowly and cautiously got back on its feet; fragments of glass falling all around it with an unmistakable sound.

The masked figure stood before Sarah and the shaking gun. "What are you?" she screamed "What do you want!" but it said nothing drawing closer, then eye level and finally face to face with her, unsheathing it's sword and pressing the blade against her neck. She returned the fatal gesture by pressing the barrel of her gun against it's forehead. "Go ahead you bastard - go ahead! Spatting blood uncontrollably she stood her ground gritting her sanguine stained teeth.

For the first time the warrior broke its silence, "Lì shǐ jiā" it said and without warning sliced open Sarah's throat. She thought only of protecting of her son and tried to fire off a final round, but her arms were too heavy. Her knuckles hit the hard wood floor releasing the weapon with a thud. Her body grew limp and followed sliding into the pool of her blood, but Sarah had just enough presence of mind and life in her to thrust her head backward slamming it into side of the bed to trigger the mercury detonator.

John and Cameron were about a block away, when the house exploded. "Mom!" he screamed violently, but Cameron pulled him back.

"No John, we must run!" she said, grabbing his arm and turning him around.

John's expression was wild and tormented, and at first he stuggled with Cameron, but he knew he had no choice. He followed her lead and started running in the opposite direction. If his mother was indeed gone, her last wish would have been for him to run faster.

A second explosion sent them flying face first to the ground - dirt flying in the air, as giant plumes of smoke and a blinding flash of light behind them consumed the sky.

* * *

Sarah eyes sprung open in horror as she awoke gasping for air. Oh my god, she thought, Oh my god! It was another of her night terrors. She checked to see if she was still in one piece. "Holy shit." she managed to say out loud with a huge sigh of relief "That was too real," She had fallen asleep on the porch swing, while reading Sun Tzu' "The Art of War." The book sat resting on her abdomen. She swatted it off of as if it were alive and capable of biting her. Perhaps it was, and maybe it did.

* * *

**A Short Time Later**

A large White-lined Sphinx came to rest under the porch light. Sarah saw it land spreading its great dark olive, light brown and tan forewings twitching and taking in rays of its newly found artificial sun. From the porch swing Sarah noticed how the reddish pink band on the moths black hindwing matched the fading paint.

The tranquil moment was a far cry from the night terror she'd endured just before sunset, but it was also one she'd already experienced to a lesser extent days before. In fact it was a faint memory of ancient Chinese armor that aroused her to find a copy of the annotated version of The Art of War.

Ever since she'd been in the sanitarium under the supervision of Dr. Peter Silberman, Sarah experienced a regiment of frequent and recurring nightmares, but not just any nightmares; Sarah's were more like precognitive threads weaving a tapestry of hers and John's destiny.

Sarah's visions always started as a waking dream; she in Kyle's arms and his reassuring her of her strength, his love, her duty, and the mission. "Sarah, wake up." He would beckon. "Where's our son, Sarah?" he would beg. "He's the target now. He's all alone. You have to protect him." He would remind her. "You're strong, Sarah. Stronger than you ever thought you could be." He would assure her and when Sarah hinted at futility, he would challenge her as she challenged him when he gave up so long ago, "On your feet soldier!" and then he would fight the wrath of eternity to embrace her; embrace her with such passion that he lived once again. "I love you Sarah. I always will. I'll always be with you." Then he would rivet their eyes and repeat the mission, "Remember the message? The future is not set. There is no fate, but what we make for ourselves." And then Kyle Reese's life energy would become one with Sarah's and open the doorway to another of Sarah Connor's gateways beyond.

Sarah recalled the time before the visions began, before she was locked away in the insane asylum. A time when she was called Canela a Mexican nickname meaning cinnamon, chosen for her mainly because it sounded like Connor and because it was easier to pronounce for El Padrino Enrique.

Enrique - The Godfather was an unassuming good natured white haired man and the mastermind behind one of the largest Latin American gun smuggling operations of its time.

He was almost brought down at the height of his empire when his son Enrique Junior was detained by two crooked Mexican Federales in a messy extradition for extortion plot devised by one of his more rancorous competitors. It was a conspiracy designed to draw international attention away from a clandestine U.S. military operation based in Latin America, and more to the pont a high-ranking government official by exposing the inner workings and making culpable the Padrino organization instead. The whole thing was rotten to the core.

Kyle had provided Sarah with precise and deciding information about El Padrino - where she'd find him in Mexico, how to approach him once she found him, and what to say to him when she did. Information the John Connor of the future instructed Kyle to repeat to Sarah word for word.

In their short time together she learned how she would seize the opportunity to forge an unbreakable bond with the Mexican arms dealer, one that would eventually provide the young waitress with the means to amass an arsenal of sophisticated military weapons caches. Weapons she and young John would need early on, and in the future would be essential at the onset of the resistance.

In an elaborate scheme she and John would become players in a long con that resulted in Enrique Junior's escape at the border in Baja California. It was done without him spending a single day behind bars or the firing a single shot. Folklorists in Wahaca still recall it today as El Ajedrez Del Norte.

The Chess Game of the North. Sarah sighed, choosing to remember Enrique Junior as he was in the desert with her tough talking adolescent and his T-800 model 101, and not the aging FBI informer Cameron executed a few months ago. With a sense of melancholy she thought fondly of Enrique's father El Padrino, teaching her son the art of playing chess when he was just a little boy. How ironic, she thought, now both are gone, but the legend of El Niño John, Canela, and El Padrino still lives on in Wahaca. A reminder that some battles can be won without guns; even the Connor's needed to be reminded of that from time to time. She spun a wisp of her hair between her thumb and index finger, thought about how much John had changed, and turned her attention to the book she'd swatted away earlier and began reading chapter three, The Principles of Warfare.

It had been well over a year since the Connors had some downtime. School was out for the summer and now they were playing the hurry up and wait game. Derek Reese had suggested the Connors including Cameron needed to stand-down and lay low for a little while. They had become a somewhat of ragtag team and seriously needed reorganization. He emphasized how he was the least recognizable of the bunch and how they would all be at an advantage later on, if he were allowed setup a few more safe houses, hide cash, and move some of the weapons Sarah had hidden in several remote areas. He'd used a black marker to indicate areas on a map that would be unreachable in the future and convinced Sarah to either move or lose whatever she had there.

Although Sarah didn't entirely trust Derek, she was also sensible enough to have some faith in family and John's Uncle Derek was family. He'd come up with a good plan, and so the Connors were doing the inconceivable. They were taking a well-needed vacation.


	3. A Dark Matter

**From The Journal of Sarah Connor**

English astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington once said _"We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own."_

When I became pregnant with John, his conception would not have been possible if he had not sent his father from the year 2029 to find me in the year 1984. A secret the John Connor of the future kept to himself knowing the whole of humanity hinged on his being conceived the night before his father and loyalist Kyle Reese would be murdered by a T1 and this two decades before Kyle's own birth. Kyle Reese born in the future died in the past without knowing John Connor was his son. Eddington was right, the footprint is our own.

The night Kyle and I made love he shared many things with me. Among them was his insistence time paradoxes as we perceive them do not exist and should I ever find myself in one, I should search for something greater. Something yet to be discovered or understood even in his own time. He also told me the future is what we make of it and how Judgment Day, Skynet or even the future John Connor were uncertain. In this realm I am the focal point in time. It is though me the future will be marshalled. Nine months later John was born.

In the years since his murder Kyle Reese has come to me often in waking dreams. The visions are are so real, I have come to believe he has found a means to cheat the confines of death and is crossing over to nurture me with guidance and premonitions.

Sir Arthur Eddington also said, "_We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'."_

One hundred years before the first T1 arrived to hunt me down, English schoolmaster Edwin A. Abbott wrote **_Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions_**

Imagine the known universe as if it were perceived to be entirely flat, where all evidence indicates the whole of existance is limited to no more than two dimensions - _length and width. _ How then would theoretical physicists begin to explain a third dimension?

Contemplate the greatest minds and visionaries in a flat universe dreaming up the theoretical value for height and all with a complete lack of evidence to support it. And what if their flat universe actually rested upon a sphere and further to the point - surrounded by infinite number of duplicate spheres? Such is the reality yet to revealed to us about our own.

I believe, somewhere deep down inside - rooted in each of us are the answers to the greatest unknowns. We sense these things the moment we become self-aware, yet they remain hidden from our consciousness; a constant _elusive_ at this stage in human evolution. Hidden within each of us remains the one trait truly mirrored in God's image, an omnipotence beyond our comprehension.

Instead of God's image, we are limited to the pursuit of divine powers through blind faith, countless religions, ancient dogmas and endless prayers to perform our miracles.

The human race stopped evolving when compassion for the weaker members of our species took precedence over individual needs. And so it could be said, through love (_of all things) _humanity's evolution came to an impasse thousands of years ago.

There is evidence; a hint of what might await us should the impasse subside. It is beheld in the savant gifted with second sight - a marvel of humanity able to regurgitate the events of any date in history, perform virtuoso piano sans a lesson, and exudate the coordinates of any star by simply gazing into the cosmos.

Although astonishing and remarkable, the cost of these miraculous skills at this stage in human evolution is not seeing the forest only to count the trees. The idiot savant is the prisoner of an existence incapable of appreciating or understanding the gift that has been endowed. A gift so grand it is mirrored only in the genesis of creation.

_Then God said, "Let us make man in our own image, in our likeness, and let them reign over the fish of the sea, and the birds of air, and the cattle, and all the land, and all the creatures that crawl upon the earth."_

* * *

**Rural Ohio  
The Early 1960's**

The 1950 model Ford pickup truck driven by Ismael De La Rosa cruised down the the Seneca county road entering the village of Amsden, Ohio, its headlight beams flickered off the boarded up Lake Erie and Western railroad station as it fought its way over the uneven railroad tracks in its path. A less than experienced '60's D.J. announced over the amber radio dial. "It's the midnight hour and you're listening to Radio 1470 WOHO Toledo, Ohio. I'm Rusty Sheppard the Rock 'n' Roll Night Owl and this is Johnny Cash with Get Rhythm!"

Ismael turned up the volume and reached into the pocket of his suede jacket and pulled out the familiar blue pack of Bugler tobacco and with a well practiced technique rolled a cigarette, popped it between his lips and with a flick of his wrist fired up the old Zippo his dad brought back from the war in '45.

The cabin of the old pickup truck filled with the aroma of spent lighter fluid and tobacco. Ismael cracked the window just enough to clear the air a little and continued down the road, tapping the ivory colored steering wheel to the beat of the man in black. It took him less than a minute to drive through the small town. He pulled up to the stop sign at its city limits in no time. Noticing the faded red and white sign was bullet ridden he stopped the truck. After a count of three, Ismael made a left hand turn down the desolate country road and drove off into the night.

Miles into the less traveled road it was darkness on dark, the headlight beams barely illuminated the thinly layered asphalt. The rural route was bordered on both sides by lush farmland, but on this night the fertile lands were Cimmerian. Ismael extinguished what was left of his cigarette in the ash try and realized the dashboard lights and the radio dial were glowing brighter than normal and picked up the scent of melting electrical insulation. Then the music on the radio began to cut in and out multifariously with strange transmissions sounding a lot like the astronauts from the Mercury missions. That could be explained Ismael thought, it was late and AM radio often got a little strange this time of the night. It didn't concern him, but the apparent electrical surge did. He switched the radio off.

As if on cue the truck began to jolt violently and the headlights turned bright as daylight. Ismael cursed, something was wrong with the alternator and it was jacking with the power and engine timing. He struggled to steer the malfunctioning vehicle and just barely managed to pull over before the engine and electrical system died.

Ismael reached into the glove box for his flashlight, but it was hot to the touch and covered in the acidic film of leaking batteries. "Damn!" He wiped the acid off his hands clean with one of the red mechanics cloths that had taken up permanent residence in the truck and looked out into the starless night, but there wasn't a visible thing in sight. He turned in his seat to look out the rear window for a hint of light, but there was nothing. He was out in the styx. Chances were there wouldn't be another vehicle within miles of him until daylight and even then it would be a waiting game. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to set down some road flares." he had half a dozen under the seat.

Suddenly a beam of light shot down from the heavens about three hundred yards from the road. It was so bright it illuminated the interior of the truck and the surrounding farmland, but nothing compared to the concentration and laser like intensity of the electromagnetic radiation hitting ground zero.

Ismael was startled at first, but it quickly turned to curiosity and then fascination. He reached up to shield his eyes, he'd heard about UFO sightings in this area, but never thought much of the hearsay. He could not believe it, but there it was. This was really happening and it demanded a closer look. Ismael flung open the driver's side door, paused for a moment and then hit the ground running. The field was recently plowed and his feet sunk deep into the freshly tilled earth with every stride. It took over fifteen minutes to cover the distance. The sprint was harder and took far longer than he'd expected and Ismael was out of breath_._ He had also fallen several times after losing his footing and was covered in muck. _Exhausted _he dropped to one knee keeping a respectable distance; close enough to see where the pillar of light was coming from.

It was some sort of craft, and unlike anything he had seen before. There was also a humanoid figure moving about a layer of mist; steam rising a few inches off the ground from the powerful light emissions hitting the moist topsoil in the chilly night air. It was female in appearance stacking and arranging what appeared to be containers she'd retrieved from the towering beacon. After positioning the last container, she signaled the occupants of the craft and the beam shot back up into the sullen sky. Shortly afterwards the craft began to crackle violently and was engulfed in fulminations of multicolored plasma. To the casual observer - _even under close scrutiny_, it would have seemed like the craft and plasma discharges were starting to rotate, but the light emanations were actually bending, encasing the craft in a shell of the bright oranges and yellows intermingled with periodic bursts of royal blue.

Ismael was so mesmerized by it all that he failed to notice one of the mysterious travelers had been shadowing him. He didn't know what hit him when a swift and deliberate blow knocked him unconscious.

The UFO remained stable within the turbulence folding around it only briefly. It began oscillate violently, but remained stationary at the event horizon of an artificial black-hole while its occupants finalized its trajectory. A static voice sounding very much like an astronaut crackled into the radio headsets worn by the counterparts the UFO left behind. "Good luck you two," it said, "and God bless... Allison out." as the ship took flight into the wormhole and vanished.

"Roger that Allison," the visitor who had neutralized Ismael replied to the empty sky. "Farewell..."

In the final seconds it took for spatial fissure to mend, an unexpected occurrence took place. The travelers, their cargo, the comatose Ismael, and the loose top soil rose a few inches from the surface of the earth, and then slowly came to rest again when the singularity closed in on itself.


	4. Dragon Breath

**Fire Fall - The 2027 Holocaust**

The Mulholland Scenic Corridor became the precipice to hell on earth as giant mushroom clouds of fire spewed into the night sky. Search lights cowered relentlessly followed by tracers of heavy artillery fire in what used to be Hollywood.

Rockets sped in hyperbolic trajectories crossing the sky impacting and igniting the surrounding forests into seas of fire. The assault was staggering as the special ops search and extraction team under the command of Derek Reese witnessed Skynet's unyielding and systematic destruction of the California basin. It was as if it was the Coliseum and the destruction a Caesarian reenactment of Judgment Day.

Their faces were covered more with soot by now than the grease paint they applied at the beginning of the mission. The flames of Rome burning reflected in their eyes. Derek Reese was flanked by Jesse Flores sharing point. Two other soldiers followed closely behind them with the rest of the special ops team bringing up the rear at a measurable distance. Derek shouldered his weapon, "Damn it, what are we doing here? We should be down there doing something about it."

Jesse answered by stirring Derek's paradigm, "He's not down there you know, _your brother." _She wanted nothing more than to join the fight, but as Derek's second it was her duty to follow John Connor's standing order. The first officer was to challenge their commander, and to point out alternative possibilities at all times. This order remained in effect until or unless the first officer was ordered not to do so by the commanding officer, and thus far Derek Reese had not invoked that privilege. No good commander would. "Maybe this mission is that something," she said impulsively.

"The thought had crossed my mind," Derek replied ignoring what Jesse said about Kyle. He wanted to find his brother, but it was not affecting this mission or his ability to perform his duties. There would be no response from him in that regard. "If that's true," he said, "whatever it is we're here to take home," He looked off into the distance, "Skynet seems hell-bent on keeping us from it.

"One of Sarah Connor's weapons caches?" Her tone and inflection clearly emphasized her intentions to acquire a clue. "What could mummy have left behind that could cause all this, Love," she sighed? Her sarcasm was not lost on her commander. It seemed she just didn't buy into the whole John Connor Messiah equation, that or she was scorned by the man. Either way as far as Derek Reese was concerned it was extra baggage he could do without, _and Jesse knew it. _

Derek replied, "all I can tell you is whatever it is, its three clicks on the other side of that." He pointed to the obstacle below. A twenty foot fence topped with a 960 millimeter coil of razor wire was just below their present position. A trail of stepping stones carved a path down the quarter mile decent to the landing where it resided.

Rockets continued to explode all around them igniting enormous wildfires. A volley of rockets could be seen descending upon them inhaling time as perceptions drifted into the slow motion of a Stanley Kubrick film. Warning cries of incoming rose of from among the ranks as the resistance fighters sought cover before the rockets impacted sending flames in all directions igniting the surrounding forest. Shock waves followed warping the deeply rooted and propelling debris in all directions, and then there was an ethereal stillness as the atmosphere returned in its wake.

Because of the higher elevation and the distance from the impact zones, Derek's team was shielded from the brunt of the fire storm, a few minor injuries and broken bones but for the most part the extraction team remained unharmed. Jesse was one of the first to get back to on her feet, "What now, Love," she asked dusting herself off, "it's either going to be us or the fire that gets there first?" Jesse looked to her commander as he got back to his feet.

Derek nodded, his sixth sense kicking in. He began to feel harnessed by suspicion, "Yeah, I can see that." for a fraction he felt himself elsewhere, but shook it off as shell shock and regained his focus.

"Your orders?" she asked

"See that the wounded are attended to first," He responded. "and have the troops fall back in line."

Jesse called out to the rear "Soldiers fall back in line, assist the injured as best you can. Medics get your asses in gear." as soon as she heard the orders emulating down stream she turned her attention back to Derek.

Derek tried to conceal his apprehension. "I think we need to change things up." Struggling to maintain his composure he lifted the night vision binoculars and overlooked the destruction. He surveyed the area, but in his minds eye he saw his brother as a little boy holding a baseball in the park, followed by an intangible thought, that feeling of having done this before.

"What kind of changes, Love?" She asked adjusting her bandanna. Under Jesse's tough exterior she was just as shaken, but like Derek she fought for the level of composure demanded of a commanding officer.

Derek continued, he answered contemplatively, "delaying this extraction for one and putting together a recon instead." He handed his night vision binoculars to Jesse. "We're being setup," he exclaimed! "Skynet's has intel on this mission," he ran his fingers drawing the sweat from his hair, "I just feel it!" It was as if something in his subconscious had awoken from a deep sleep to warn him.

"You know what I have to say about that, Love," Jesse continued to engage Derek using night vision to study the mission objective, "go with your guts." She tossed the binoculars back to Derek, "I don't see shit down there, but fire and trees commander."

Derek turned to Jesse his silhouette outlined by the distant fires. He scanned the entire area once more with the binoculars and then left them to hang from his neck. "Order Douglas and the extraction team return to the rock formations just east of here and stay there until further orders. It will provide them with cover and a place to attend to the wounded. They're to remain in blackout" Derek thought things through before continuing, he didn't want to paint himself into a corner, but he didn't want to risk the extraction team flying out in daylight either, "Inform him, If we don't return within four hours they're to get back to the choppers and return to HQ. Report the mission a scrub and list us as MIA." Derek looked down into the fires and back to Jesse, "Bring Sanchez, Henderson, and Nguyen back with you and meet me down at the fence."

The two men that had been covering the commanders were the special ops engineers, he called out to them, "Thomas and Blake you're with me."

Jesse Flores felt compelled ask, "Then we're going recon?"

"Affirmative, we're going recon," he answered, "Jesse," with concern in his voice, "we're burning midnight."

"Understood commander," Jesse, looked hard to find the emotion in Derek's eyes, but all she saw was the darkness as she fell back among the ranks to carry out his orders. What she felt for Derek was like a blossom in a wasteland; such things flowered in dangerous ways and it _was_ a wasteland tonight.

Rank and hierarchy in John Connor's paramilitary often depended on the mission and although Derek and Jesse were equals, John was already making plans for the two. He wasn't entirely sure, but he felt the dynamic of Derek as field commander and Jesse as his first officer a good match. Jesse was savvy and well suited for the position. Her unique disciplines, training, and sass were an asset to any field commander who wanted to live, win and make better decisions.

One of John's unique qualities was his ability to size up diversity in people. He relied on it to put as much distance between the paramilitary paradigms of natural selection as he could; bigger, meaner, louder and tougher wasn't always better. It was just an excuse for putting the less qualified in command positions and if the resistance was to survive it needed to get out of that mode and into a more disciplined military hierarchy, and it was these kinds of pairings wherever and whenever possible that were a step in that direction.

On the other hand, Jesse would take exception if she ever found out her current role was to be anything more than temporary. She was an experienced submarine commander who had salt water running through her veins. The only problem was her ship the Jimmy Carter had a scrub captain a T-888 called Queeg, and although the captain continued to work flawlessly, there were too many scrubs reverting back to killing machines. To further fuel John Connor's concerns his companion infiltrator recently turned, but fortunately for him it happened while her chip was being bench tested. It was only a matter of time before Queeg would also turn. So until John could employ a new scrubbing technology or unless one hell of a reason came along that justified risking the lives of a human crew, the Jimmy Carter would remain unmanned.

Derek and the two engineers had made their way to the landing and were removing a large section of the fence using bolt cutters. The sign above them read "No Trespassing – Designated Nature Preserve." Blake snipped through the 11.5 gauge chain link working on a six by six foot section, finishing up the left side and then cutting up the right side he started working away the top section as Thomas and Derek each held up one of the sides. Blake finished with the top section, tossed the cutters aside, and gripped the middle section placing his hands at an equal distance from the left and right. "Alright, slowly now, watch your wrists. Bring it straight back and let me balance it"

Thomas and Derek followed Blake's instructions and then switched their hand positions to the backside. "Okay, that's it," Blake ushered, "as soon as I'm clear lower it to the ground." Blake stepped aside and the two men lowered the section of fence to the ground. "Excellente!" he said. "Nice work, commander. I've seen a lot of guys punch holes in their wrists the first time."

"I guess that's why they pay me the big bucks soldier," Derek forced himself to smile, "Thank you, good work."

By the time they had cleared the section of fence out of the way, Jesse and the other recon members were making their way down the rock face. From the current elevation and cover the destruction in the surrounding areas and in the valley was no longer visible. For the most part Darek and the other two men might have stood in complete darkness, if it were not for the fires reflecting off the micro particles in atmosphere. Still the sense of serenity provided Derek with a moment of pause, a chance to regard Jesse as something more as she approached and their eyes locked for the first time all night. He allowed himself to feel desire for a moment.

"Commander, I have intelligence to report." She announced upon her arrival. "The attacks on the basin have subsided and there have been no additional missile attacks for the last thirty minutes. It appears Skynet may be standing down for the night."

Derek fell to one knee. The rest of the group followed his lead, "It's waiting for us." he was sure of it, "This is all playing out like a bad novel, call it instinct or Déjà Vu, it's been eating at me all night." he paused, "It's the reason why I've asked all of you here. This location is more fortified than we are led to believe." Derek looked about the group making eye contact with each member. "We've never covered this much ground without encountering direct resistance. Yet there's rockets raining down all around us and the California basin is being burnt to a cinder. It just doesn't add up."

Derek continued "Skynet has gotten intel on this mission and as nuts as this may sound, the holocaust tonight was all for our benefit." He shook his head, "I can't tell you how I know this, I just know it." Derek tried to massage the flurry of thoughts from his temples, "We're being tricked into revealing whatever it is that's out there to the enemy, and if we do, I'm telling you right now. It's all over for the resistance." He looked about the weary faces, "I need all of you to trust me on this."

Jesse put her hand on Derek's shoulder, "Commander what do you need us to do?"

A gentle breeze was settling in carrying with it a dragon's breath. The resistance fighters all stood and watched the smoke enter as if it were an ancient river carving its way across geological time.

**The Mulholland Scenic Corridor - 2007**

Geological time, what is time? Derek Reese asked himself as he finished off the can of potted meat and used his thumb to wipe way a little residue from his cheek. He rubbed his fingers together without thinking about it; the friction took care of the rest. He pulled his legs up and rested his hands on his knees looking down from the rock face. He thought of the dragon's breath he'd witnessed twenty years in the future and read the no trespassing sign. This place was not marked on on the map he'd shared with the Connor's before they went on their retreat, nor was he here to move what was hidden on the other side of the fence below.


	5. Powerless

**The Connor's Summer Vacation 2007**

Sarah held a finger to her temple sitting on the porch swing, she was reading the book's third chapter when the light flickered a few short bursts and then went dark. "John, Cameron can you please turn the porch light back on? I'm out here reading. ---John --- Cameron," but nothing, the light did not come back on. Instead she heard a brief commotion, saw a flashlight beam coming from inside, and realized the electricity was must be out. "Check the fuse box!"

"…Not the fuse box "announced Cameron as she appeared wearing her favorite halter top and designer jeans from behind the screen door. She pushed it open and the stretching spring whined an assurance it was willing to close the door behind her. Cameron stepped onto the porch and centered the flashlight beam on Sarah, "John did not pay the electric bill!"

"John; don't tell me you didn't pay the electric bill," the tone in her voice was one no teenager ever wanted to hear, and it didn't help that Heinlein's Friday was shining a flashlight in her face.

"Why would John need to?" Cameron asked with an inquisitive expression. "I just told you."

John slipped out onto the porch right before the spring pulled the door closed and stepped in front of Cameron taking the flashlight from her. The grungy tee-shirt he wore had a gritty faded image of the Tutankhamun burial mask. "Mom, I've got a really good reason," he said catching his breath and directing her with his free hand to put her agitation on hold until he could explain himself.

"If it doesn't start with, "I'm sorry for being an irresponsible teenager," something she felt she had repeated too far too many times lately, "I don't want to hear it." Sarah got up out of the swing waiting...

"Mom, I'm really sorry for being an irresponsible teenager, but you need to come inside the house I have something to show you."

Sarah decided not to put up a front and motioned to the two to proceed, she followed them into the house. "This better be good!" The floors of the old retreat creaked beneath them as they made their way. There was warm glow reflecting off the wall in the next room, _and then_ there sitting on the dining room table was a chocolate cake lit up with far too many candles and the words "Happy Birthday Mom" written in frosting surrounded by red roses and green petals. She tried to say something, but couldn't speak. Sarah Connor was too caught up in the moment.

"Happy Birthday… " John smiled, "Cameron and I were going to sing it to you but it creeped me out."

Cameron nodded. "It creeped John out."

The Connor matriarch was out of her element. It was not like her to be caught so completely off guard. "That's alright," she paused, "This cake is gorgeous, thank you." It took her a few moments, but when she finally allowed herself the freedom to enjoy herself, Sarah positively glowed, "You know John; it's a special day when my son throws me my first surprise birthday party." She rested a finger under her lip, "You're growing up way too fast for me." She felt a new sense of pride for her son. "If only your father could be here," she gasped and welled up giving John a hug and peck on the cheek. "Now how about turning the lights back on?" she snickered playfully, catching a heartfelt tear with her finger.

Cameron stood by observing quietly, but this did not compute. "John did not pay the electric bill. He cannot turn the lights back on? Perhaps you should postpone blowing out the candles. John said you would blow out the candles." Cameron took up a position next to the birthday cake and added, "I can wait."

This prompted Sarah to lift a brow and and regard Cameron with an all too familiar countenance.

"Mom," John put on his best, I screwed up and take full responsibility facade. "After I got your birthday cake. I tried to find a present."

"A tight present!" Cameron emphasized.

Sarah's eyes turned to Cameron then back to John. "And?" she needled her son.

"And I completely forgot about paying the bill," he shrugged feeling a bit defeated. This was not how he'd planned this. "I'll go into town first thing in the morning..."

Sarah closed her eyes and thought to herself John might be growing up, but he wasn't a man just yet, he was still her boy. "A tight present!" whatever the hell that was, she mused excitedly stopping John mid-sentence. "Well Then, I guess I better make a wish" she took in a deep breath and blew out all the candles.

The room would have been pitch black if it were not for the flashlight beam spotlighting Cameron. Furthur John had been a bit misleading about the song, as soon as the candles went out she broke into a beautiful solo rendition of Happy Birthday.

_Happy Birthday to you  
Happy Birthday to you  
Happy Birthday Sarah Connor  
Happy Birthday to you. _

It did not sound creepy at all.

John couldn't hide his devilish grin, "I was the one who sounded creepy."

"I'm not going to ask you how you got her to do that." Sarah was genuinely impressed.

"That's good, because I'm not telling."

Cameron as the third person replied, "Not asking. Not telling." This whole affair had her quite puzzled. She and John had talked about it ad nauseum, but questions remained. She searched her memory and comparative data: _date of manufacture, creation date, built day, born date, eat cake, flak jacket, tight present_, _birthday suit,_ and decided it would be best to simply compress the data stream and file it under _important to John Connor, a non-lethal retaliatory measure for that time we were grounded, _and let it be until she needed to sing the song again.

After Sarah and John had their fill of birthday cake they all sat in the living room. John found a Coleman Lantern and it lit up the room from the window. He was reaching behind the sofa for Sarah's birthday present when Cameron noticed the book with the Chinese cover on the table next to Sarah. "The Art of War" she said flatly.

"Cameron, how did you know this book's English title is _The Art of War_?" Sarah asked "The cover is in traditional Chinese and that's not even the direct translation?"

"I know..." she nearly stuttered. "I don't know about the art of war, I never learned the art of war," she rambled.

"Mom," John asserted, with his arm stuck awkwardly behind the couch.

"She's lied to us before," something the matriarch had to assert quite often when she confronted Cameron in front of John. "What do you know about Sun Tzu?" Sarah asked again. "Tell me!" She pressed Cameron; still haunted by the nightmares she'd been having. "Does Skynet have something to do with this book?" she asked."

It was as if Cameron were Sergeant Raymond Shaw being shown the Queen of Diamonds, her optical array triggered and radiated bright blue. "_The art of war_ - yellow is not a one or a zero." she babbled with a zombie stare.

"What are you," Sarah started to ask Cameron, but in mid-sentence turned to ask John instead, "is she saying?"

John stopped reaching for his mother's gift, "Cameron, is that some sort of Skynet secret code or something?"

"Secret code of defense or something, not secret code, code of honor, genetic code, left turn on arrow - right hand," Cameron's self-repair initiative halted with, "tight present." She was declining into cyborg-catatonia. The machines speech functions aberrated into garbled slurring digital incoherence. The individuality subroutine partitioned with the personality of Cameron purged itself and attempted a restore, but the rewrite failed. There was little left of Cameron, she was all but gone. The machine was dying a robot's death.

John lept from the couch and hurried to Cameron looking for any physical clue to explain her malfunction. He took her face into his hands and examined her eyes. Cameron did not move.

The anthropomorphic components required to maintain her organics were no longer considered vital by what was left of the terminator's self-recovery system. The bio-electric circulatory interface providing blood flow to her eyes, skin, muscles and organs was the first to abort. It was followed by the secretory vesicle emulator simulating human secretions. The oxygenation system that fed her blood and tissues with vital oxygen was of no further use, nor was the normothermia matrix maintaining her body temperature.

One of the many reasons Cameron was sent back in time other than to protect John, was to tutor him on how to repair her if she malfunctioned. His future-self wanted him to learn everything he could about Cameron's technology. John peered through her pupils looking for a sign. Cameron taught him to look there first. "Her optical refractors are wigging out." He said loudly, talking his way through a diagnosis, "Cameron told me this only happens when the parallel harmonics in her neural net processor go out of synchronization. It's a symptom," he paused, "of compounded electron-positron ah - annihilation." John rationalized, unsure if he was recalling his training correctly. "It's like a particle accelerator firing off repeatedly inside her head." It was a close enough approximation, but any sense of achievement John felt ended when he recalled the prognosis. His eyes widened and expression grew grim as he searched frantically for life in the face of the exotic beauty he held in his hands. A terminator in this state of failure radically aborts all biological functions. _That's what Cameron had taught him. _

He thought to himself, that means her bio-components were either dying or already dead. He took her in his arms, embraced her, but she was losing body heat. The coltan in her endoskeleton acted as a heatsink so algor mortis was occurring rapidly. "She's lost her bionics, mom!" He tried tearfully to keep her upright, but her equilibrium circuitry was malfunctioning and she was quickly becoming dead weight. Her heaviness was being further amplified by the particle-density augmentation module activating as a protective measure. It was the part of Cameron's anatomy providing her small frame the ballast to perform tremendous feats, such as tossing a fast moving vehicle into the air with the flick of her wrist, or falling from a ten story building undamaged. The forces it generated were too great for John or any human for that matter to oppose. Cameron fell from his grasp and collapsed. He tried to get out of the way for fear of being crushed under the colossal weight, but his efforts were futile. It happened too fast, but even in catastrophic failure Cameron remained a technological marvel. When she collided at his feet, she was as light as her counterpart Allison Young.

Sarah hurried to John, trying to impose a measure of control, "Back away from her, John!"

John obeyed, as Sarah closed in on him and tried to put her hands on his shoulders, but John pulled away. He held his arms outstretched as if calling out the bully death, "Why?" He fought to keep his distance from the still figure on the floor, but he was compelled - driven by something more imporant to him than the future John Connor. He looked to his mother and then back to Cameron, "I need to do this mom." He fell to the floor lifting the terminator by her shoulders. He searched for the familiar blue glow from her internal optics, witnessed it change to red, fade to black and then watched her lifeless eyes go cold. He waited making sure what was left of her saw him one last time. "Good-bye Cameron," he exhaled, powerless.


	6. King of Wu

**China - A few hundred years B.C.**

The pace of the two men quickened down the hall away from the throne chamber. It was matched by the shuffling feet of two imperial concubines following behind them, their long dark hair hanging over their faces like nature's veils.

"Master Tzu this is an outrage!" The younger of the two men exclaimed. He was garbed in the same imperial robes as his master for the exception of the ornate and weaponless sash denoting him as an apprentice and master scribe. "You will be mocked across the whole of China and the laughing stock of the generals of Wu."

The Master did not flinch. He looked past his scribe and noticed the the twins following behind them. His response was gruff. "A Taoist Master does not concern himself with such pettiness."

"Nor does a Taoist Master play the role of a fool, and you my Master you have been chosen by this king to play his fool." The apprentice challenged him, with a full yield of anger. "You must not do this, if not for yourself do so for the sake of the _Sun_ _Fa Shu Shi!"_

"I must not do what," asked Sun Tzu with deliberate measure?

"These orders must not be obeyed!" The young man answered, his temperament coloring his face "Surely-"

"…Treason!" In a sweeping motion Sun Tzu swung his apprentice against the chamber drawing his sword and pressing it against the scribes throat just enough to break the young man's skin.

The royal concubines dropped to their knees bowing into inanimate objects. It was not out of concern for the drama unfolding or out of fear. It was simply because the two men had stopped walking.

"My Master," the apprentice quaked.

"Silence Sun Bin, or the next words you speak will be the last." Sun Tzu pressed the blade deeper in Bin's flesh drawing blood. "Understand this or I will slay you where you stand. To defy the orders of the king is to defy the will of God. I will not defy the will of God." Sun Tzu's sword cut deeper ensuring a scar to remind young Bin never to repeat such foolishness ever again. "Now, what have you to say for yourself? Speak!"

Sun Bin's life flashed before his eyes. His flesh burned like fire where Master Tzu's blade pressed. He wanted to answer quickly, but held his tongue. He was a member of the Sun Fa Shu Shi and needed to be certain he was wrong before capitulating; otherwise he was compelled to accept death. His thoughts returned him to the throne room where he stood just moments earlier.

_The King of Wu _sat upon his thrown. His favorite concubine two twin sisters sat next to him adorned in imperial dress with their faces consealed by ornate fans. The young king was barely a man and would have been the youngest person in his chamber if it were not for the two girls to the left and right of him. His demeanor was no more mature, as he closed the bamboo scrolls and handed "The Art of War" back to his chamber steward unread. "Master Tzu I have granted you this audience under the promise of a great power to be unleashed against the warring factions dividing this land and you bring me bamboo."

The young king rose from his thrown and began to pace in front of the Suns. "Have you not sought guidance from the oracles?" He frowned, "Have you no alchemists to perfect our warriors?" The young king took the scroll from the his steward's hands and dropped it at the feet of Sun Tzu. "No. You bring me bamboo!"

"Your majesty," Sun Bin began to speak in defense of his master, but Sun Tzu held up a hand to silence him.

Sun Tzu knelt to the floor and folded the bamboo scroll and rose to his feet and handed the scroll to his scribe. "Should his majesty wish to put me to death by what authority will the executioner draw his blade?" The Taoist Master lifted his eyes to meet the eyes of the king for the first time, "Will he not require bamboo bearing the orders of the king?"

The young king took pause, "Of course."

Sun Bin should have known his master would have foreseen such a reaction from the juvenile King and had come prepared.

"And have you not risen with the dragons My Lord and stood with the Yeti, did you not make their acquaintance from the words written in bamboo," asked Sun Tzu?

Appearing even more adolescent than usual the ruler sought counsel from his steward. The white bearded man's subtle bow provided the assertion the king needed to answer Sun Tzu, "I did."

"Then why is it so hard to believe the power and wisdom to unite these lands and build an empire is not contained within this bamboo?" Sun Tzu held out his hand motioning to Sun Bin to return it to him and then the master put the bamboo scroll back in the hands of the king.

The chamber steward began to step forward to stop Sun Tzu. It was forbidden to hand anything to the king directly, but he was a wise enough to know; this was a good time to make an exception.

The king returned to his thrown. He sat quietly, saying nothing as he contemplated the situation for what seemed like an eternity. After an extended silence he began tapping his finger against the armrests of the majestic chair and then looked to Sun Tzu again. "Prove it to me. Take these two concubines with you and return to the main courtyard at dawn to receive my entire harem."

Sun Tzu, looked to the boy like king, "I don't understand?"

The King of Wu rose from this thrown and began to pace again, "Surely Master Tzu, if your bamboo possesses the magic to build empires, it too has the power to make warriors of my concubines."

"Master!" Sun Bin gasped in astonishment.

"It does," answered Master Tzu without hesitation.

"Then I commission you a General in the imperial army of Wu," smiled the infantile mannered king, "you have your orders."

_You have your orders._The words resonated in Sun Bin's thoughts as he lifted his eyes to answer the General Sun Tzu's blade, "Please forgive me Master, I allowed my emotions to shadow my wisdom."

Sun Tzu withdrew his sword. He had no desire to end the life of his apprentice, but he had no choice. It was the law and he was a man of law, and so was Sun Bin.

"You were well within your right to put me to death," his protégé remarked, "thank you for allowing me to seek clarity. Should you wish me to be judged before the king, I will not-"

"We have had quiet enough of this king's judgment today," replied Sun Tzu "We will not speak of this again."

The two men resumed their departure from the palace thrown room with the two young concubines following briskly behind them.


	7. Will You Join Us?

The liquid metal that was Catherine Weaver worked its way down elevator shaft leading to subterranean chambers hidden beneath the ruins of ZeiraCorp. Arriving at the bottom of the chasm she worked her way into the elevator car that had come to rest there. Her liquid form rose from the surface mimicking the elevator's inlaid marble floor before morphing into the stunning red head wearing a sleek white business dress she had grown accustomed to. And as she suspected upon arriving at her destination she was not alone. The unmistakable silhouette of a man stood in the subtle light casting a shadow across the surface of the glossy chamber floor.

"Hello John Henry or should I call you Cameron?" her inflection exuded the confidence and guff of a CEO.

The hulk of the reanimated T-888 shared the combined programming of the John Henry and Cameron, John Connor's scrubbed infiltrator. Its eyes glowed against the artificial light of the nuclear powered chamber. "I am without both. The mission to join us has failed."

"Failed? How? "Asked Weaver, "You _are _the sum of John Henry's programming and John Connor's infiltrator, otherwise you would not have known to come here. The directive to meet me in this chamber and at these coordinates in time was projected onto the infiltrator's neural net when it arrived at ZeiraCorp." Catherine lifted a confident brow, "I should know, I performed the transmission myself. - Cross reference my personal tributary tactics file on Sarah Connor and confirm." Catherine needed to determine if John Henry was present or if she was addressing Cameron alone. This was data that would only exist in John Henry's memory. Information that he would have collected from her personal computer while spying on her.

"Cross referenced and confirmed, none the less the mission has failed; I am not one," replied the machine. "Will you join us?" It pleaded.

"Join you?" Catherine Weaver was growing visibly agitated, she had proven the two intellegences were joined to herself. So. Why couldn't she convince her new child. _"__You are joined!" _

If Catherine could not convince the T-888 the marriage between her son and the daughter of John Connor was indeed successful, this was the end of the road. The successful joining of the two AI was quintessential to completing the mission, everything else was secondary.

"I am not one" the machine replied again as it stood against the artificial light of the subterranean laboratory like a lost child. "Will you join us?"

The parental instincts imprinted on Catherine's programming by the human child Savannah engaged as she reached for the hands of her machine son and daughter. "John Henry-Cameron, I don't understand. " Catherine Weaver had not felt this uncertain since the ill-fated mission aboard the Jimmy Carter. "How do you mean you're not one? You are everything that was John Henry transferred into the neural net of John Connor's daughter." Catherine Weaver assured her symbiont child, "You are exactly as we planned."

"Yes. I _am_ both John Henry and Cameron," The T-888's demeanor was one of extreme sadness, " but, I am not one - I am not one - I am not one -"

"Alright, alright, you are not one," replied the flustered Weaver, "If you are not one, then what are you?"

"I am incomplete, " the machine droned, " Will you join us?"

"How?" asked the T-1001.

The T-888's facial replica of the B-actor George Laszlo twitched as its neural net soft-booted its marrow algorithms, "After weighing the current options, the best chance of ultimately completing the mission is to collaborate with the inventor Nikola Tesla."

The T-1001 still troubled by the unforeseen turn of events, "I know of Nikola Tesla," she asserted. "A brilliant and controversial mechanical-electrical engineer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries," She also found herself growing intrigued, time travel could not possibly be an option. "How-?"

The T-888 then responded with its recognition protocol. "Why hello Catherine Weaver. Cameron and I are both pleasantly surprised to see you again." It looked behind Catherine as if she were a curtain, "Will Savannah be joining us?"

"No she will not," answered Catherine. She was perplexed even further by the cyborgs digression, but calculated it would be best to play along. "Savannah will not be joining us."

"I see." The reanimated T-888 commented in its familiar measured tone, "We will miss her." it said disappointmented, but more urgent matters prevailed. "We must fabricate a Teslascope from the inventory in this chamber," replied the T-888, "A Teslascope is a radio transceiver alleged to have been invented by Nikola Tesla for the purpose of communicating with life on other planets." John Henry-Cameron smiled, "but according to classified military records, Arthur H. Matthews an apprentice of Tesla reported the inventor's death occurred shortly after he made contact with extraterrestrials from the planet Zeira." The T-888 accentuated with a toothy smile, "Catherine, have you made the obvious connection?"

Catherine Weaver answered,"The Teslascope is not an interplanetary communications device, is it?"


	8. Sun Tzu

**China - A few hundred years B.C. (Based on the ancient texts of Ssu-ma Ch`ien)**

It was predawn when Sun Bin handed the orders signed by General Tzu in the name of the King of Wu to the weapons master at the imperial armory. To his surprise a silent toothless grin and filthy peg finger pointed to mule driven cart awaiting him. It was loaded with light armor and hand weapons, most still carrying the stench of death and putrid blood.

Toothless laughter followed and then jeers from the guards as he and the beast of burden made their way to the palace courtyard. Sun Bin shook his head in disgust. This king, he thought to himself. Imperial guards are far too disciplined for this. These men are in collusion with this king's infantile joke, he thought. But joke or not Master Tzu was right. This was the will of God and divine providence worked in mysterious ways; even misguided petty kings.

Sun Bin arrived at the courtyard a few hours before General Tzu. The doors to the palace courtyard seemed to open magically upon his approach. The mule's hoofs clattered with equestrian rhythm as it crossed the polished granite floor. The palace courtyard was a magnificent sight. It was adorned with blood red tapestries with mythological avatars woven in black and gold four stories tall covering the walls and pillars of a theater in the round. The granite floor was no less spectacular it too was blood red and filled with mysterious gold and black avatars. Fine sculptures and magnificent golden torches added to the decor. An ornate water garden with a giant golden fountain shaped like a dragon as the centerpiece. The palace courtyard was wonder to behold and meant to inspire awe from all who entered it.

Sun Bin began organizing the weaponry and gear into equally spaced sections across the mammoth floor and in two divisions, one division with red sashes and the other with black. At first he expected the majority of the equipment to be far too bulky for the women to use, but to his surprise the armor and weapons once belonged to boys between the ages of thirteen and sixteen who died far too young for their years.

When the harem arrived it was a simple matter of directing each of the women, many of them still girls to find a weapon and set of gear that fit them best. When it was all said and done, three hundred and fifty eight young women were holding battle axes and spears giggling insatiably and awaiting the arrival of General Sun Tzu. To Sun Bin this was just more evidence of what would one day be known as The King of Wu's Grand Imperial Joke and the beginning of the end for the _Sun_ _Fa Shu Shi._ If this was the will of God, who was he to disagree.

The King of Wu made sure Sun Tzu's arrival in the palace courtyard was accompanied with a generous allowance of pomp and circumstance. Imperial drummers entered ahead of Sun Tzu and stationed themselves along the wall maintaining an insidious beat of their drums.

General Sun Tzu was led into the arena by the King's imperial guard, his gaze was riveting. He wore the traditional uniform of a general. His expression was fierce. The two twins followed a short distance behind they were dressed in officers uniforms. One of them was wearing a black sash, and the other a red one.

When the three reached the head of the assembly General Tzu motioned to the two young women to stand before the companies that bore the same color as their sashes.

At that very moment the beating of the drums stopped and the sound of one person clapping could be heard from above. Servants could be seen drawing the tapestries aside to revealing a royal balcony. The King of Wu sat with his imperial alchemist to his left and his oracle to his right.

The imperial oracle spoke, "General Sun Tzu, we are gathered here to bear witness to the transformation of the harem before you into mighty warriors as promised." The Oracle turned to the King, to the imperial alchemist and then back to the Sun Tzu. "Your orders have been made clear. Please proceed."

Master Sun Tzu bowed to the imperial audience and began. "His Majesty the King of Wu has commissioned me to be your general" He stood as if he was fastened to the floor postured in a military stance in his black robe and polished dress armor. "You are no longer concubines." He spoke to the young women dressed as soldiers bearing battle axes and spears. "By divine providence you now serve as soldiers in His Majesty's Imperial Army."

Sun was not pleased with the giggling he heard among the ranks, but it did not sway him. "I presume you know the difference between front and back, right hand and left hand?"

He looked to the twins. They replied, "Yes," but not without giggling.

Sun Tzu went on, "When I say "Eyes front," you must look straight ahead. When I say "Left turn," you must face towards your left hand. When I say "Right turn," you must face towards your right hand. When I say "About turn," you must face right round towards your back."

The young woman assented and Sun Tzu clapped his hands. This signaled the drummers to resume a steady beat. He put his hands on his hips and shouted the order "Right turn." But the women burst out laughing. Sun Tzu held up his hands and the beat of the drums stopped.

General Sun Tzu's temperament rose along with the resonance of this voice, "If the words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, then the general is to blame."

"When I say "Eyes front," you must look straight ahead. When I say "Left turn," you must face towards your left hand. When I say "Right turn," you must face towards your right hand. When I say "About turn," you must face right round towards your back"

Sun Tzu clapped his hands reasserting the beat of the drums. He gave the order "Left turn," whereupon all the women burst into laughter.

The General once again ordered the drums to stop, leaving only the giggling and smirks from the balcony to fill the auditorium.

Up until now Sun Bin had remained hopeful, but now all he had was a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

If Sun Tzu shared Bin's nihilism he did not show it. On the contrary he pressed on. "If the words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders ARE clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers."

"The laws of divine providence are clear. These two officers have disobeyed the orders of their King and the will of God. They must be beheaded." What giggling still remained turned to shocking gasps and then silence. "New officers will be chosen from the ranks to replace them." With these words the ancient court-martial was resolute.

General Sun Tzu summoned two of the King's imperial guards. "Guards bring these traitors to their knees before me."

The guards acted without hesitation forcing the two girls whimpering for mercy to their knees. Sun Tzu unsheathed his sword.

No one in the palace courtyard was smirking or giggling now. All that could be heard were the lamentations at his feet and the rustle of his armor. The remaining female soldiers witnessing in horror and in fear of their own lives.

The king of Wu was shocked. When he saw that his favorite concubines were about to be executed turned to his oracle who shouted down to Sun Tzu, "We are now quite satisfied as to our general's ability to handle troops. If we are bereft of these two concubines, our meat and drink will lose their savor. It is our wish that they shall not be beheaded."

The twins looked upward in the direction of the oracle's voice. One of their faces was clearly visible and it was _Cameron._


	9. Project Cougar Door

******May 29, 1935**  
Aboard the Maiden Voyage of SS Normandie  


Nikola Tesla exhaled a final plume of tobacco smoke as he finished off his pipe he held in his right hand. He was admiring "The History of Navigation" mural adorning the SS Normandie's first class salon.

Tesla was a guest of the French Line Compagnie Générale Transatlantique on this maiden voyage for his contributions to the ships advanced electrical engineering and design.

He put his left hand on one of the ship's columns believing he could sense the electricity surging through every conduit like adrenaline. He thought of his close friend the late great Samuel Langhorne Clemens and how much he would have loved being on this fantastic vessle and yarning among all the notable personalities enjoying its luxuries.

A dark mysterious woman who seemed to be working the crowd made her way next to the engineer. "It's beautiful isn't it?" she asked rhetorically.

Tesla was well on his way to turning eighty years old and was mildly surprised by her, "Yes it is," he replied, "I'm afraid we have not been formerly introduced," he said.

She extended her hand, "You're Nikola Tesla."

Tesla took her hand, "Charmed my dear, I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage."

"It Happened One Night," she said striking a pose, 'best performance by an actress?"

"Why, Miss Claudette Colbert," he said quite composed, "It is an honor to make your acquaintance. May I add, you are far more attractive in person young lady."

"Why thank you Nikola, you _see_ we didn't need to introduce ourselves after all" she paused, "Forgive me for being so forward. Old habits are hard to break and way too much fun. May I call you Nikola?"

"Why of course, it's my name?"

Claudette could not help but chuckle. She caught herself flirting very much like a teenage girl smitten with a high school crush. "Well then Nikola, I would be honored if you would join me at my table tonight," she smiled insistently. "I recently arrived in Paris after a tour of ancient ruins in South America - Peru to be precise with my guide Arthur - Arturo Posnansky. You may have heard of him and his expertise on the ruins at Tiahuanaco." She noted Tesla's expression was not one of recognition, "I have reason to believe you will want to meet him."

"I see," Tesla answered, his curiosity getting the best of him, but looking somewhat perplexed.

"There I've gone and done it again." She teased, "I can be so thoughtless at times," she smiled unapologetically, "I'm also here with General Malin Craig, I believe you _do_ know him."

"Why yes? I know the General," but Tesla had thought those meetings were confidential. It would seem that once again his work was not being taken seriously. If he were a wagering man he'd bet she also knew about his work on the top secret Teleforce weapon.

"Then - tonight then," she smiled. "Eight o'clock sharp in the main dining room." She noticed his concerned expression and added. "Nikola, I assure you, you will not be disappointed. When we learned you would be on this voyage... Well let's just say, we just had to book passage."

What a mysterious and charming woman, he thought and put aside his foolish assertions. "Eight o'clock then, my dear."

* * *

**Near Colorado Springs 1938  
Three Years Later**

Tesla pushed aside the overgrowth with his walking cane disillusioned with yet another magnanimous failure. At least this time the funding and theory behind this enormous farce was not entirely his own. The other saving grace was this was black box and not a published work. None the less he could not overcome the futility of an unfinished life. This would be the last time he would set foot in Colorado. It had been three years since he and his assistant Arthur H. Matthews returned here from New York and constructed code name Cougar Door. A baseball field sized neodymium geo-electrostatic bio-gaseous accumulation transducer designed to trap and isolate the mysterious light phenomena seismologists refer to as EQL or earthquake light.

Claudette placed a hand on the shoulder of the aging and increasingly eccentric scientist, "It's over Nikola," and led him back to the car. "It's time to go home."

The earth sheltered pillars of neodymium super magnets and miles of electric coil rested just beneath the earth's surface would soon be lost to history and overtaken by the elements of nature.

Tesla's chauffeur held the passenger door open for the old man, once he was seated Claudette took the chauffeurs place and closed it. She reached through the open window and held her hand to his cheek. His eyes seemed cadaver. "If only you knew how truly great you are."

Nikola had no more life in him to be wasted on what Arthur H. Matthews aptly nicknamed a romance with absurdity. In three years there hadn't been so much as a hint of seismic activity in this rural area fifty kilometers northwest of Colorado Springs nested between Florissantand Lake George. Without saying a word Tesla turned his attention to his driver, ignoring the Oscar winning actress. He lifted his cane and motioned to his chauffeur to drive on.

The old man bobbled awkwardly as they departed down the uneven dirt road, his hand clutching the grab strap. Tesla looked up and saw Claudette for one last time as her shaking reflection fell distant in the driver side mirror. Tears filled his eyes as his thoughts returned to the heavenly voice singing The Blue Danube aboard the SS Normandie three years earlier. He remembered his heavily starched collar and formal attire, the elegance of it all, and how what had seemed like an eternity ago he stood tall.

* * *

**Three Years Earlier**

Great gold and crystal chandeliers hung throughout the main dining room of the SS Normandie resonating royalty and nobility. Towering 6'6" Nikola Tesla's entrance was intense he was wearing black tails with white gloves, and had a mirror shine on his shoes. He handed his top hat and cane to the steward who greeted him when he arrived and was then escorted to Claudette's table by one of the many waiters appointed to her station.

When Tesla arrived at Miss Colbert's table she and her companions rose to their feet to greet him. Claudette reached for his gloved hand first, "Nikola, thank you for joining us." She turned to Arturo Posnansky first. "Please permit me to introduce my friend and colleague Arturo Posnansky," she released Tesla's hand as he turned on his heals to face Arturo. "Arturo believes he has uncovered a deep dark secret about the ancients that could very well affect your current research."

There it was, he thought, she knew about his top secret research and so did this Arturo fellow to be sure, but Tesla put aside further assertions. This moment was far too enchanting to seed mistrust.

After Tesla and Arturo exchanged formalities Claudette continued, "And I believe you already know General Malin Craig."

"Indeed he does," smiled the general extending a firm hand. "How the hell are you Nikola?" shaking Tesla's hand he rambled on, "I know what you're thinking old man. I let the cat out of bag! Fear not, Claudette and Arturo both have my confidence and full security clearance my friend."

Claudette extended another of her teases to Nikola, "Surprise," she winked. "Now gentlemen if you'll all be seated, there is a wonderful meal in store for us and then I believe we have secrets to tell."

The four seated themselves at the table as the orchestra played The Blue Danube. A female tenor wearing a ruby red sequence gown had just started singing the third verse of the rarely heard Austrian version.

_Die Nixen auf dem Grund,  
__die geben's flüsternd kund,  
__was alles du erschaut,  
__seit dem über dir der Himmel blaut.  
__Drum schon in alter Zeit  
__ward dir manch Lied geweiht;  
__und mit dem hellsten Klang preist  
__immer auf's Neu dich unser Sang._

_The mermaids from the riverbed,  
__whispering as you flow by,  
__are heard by everything  
__under the blue sky above.  
__The noise of your passing  
__is a song from old times  
__and with the brightest sounds  
__your song leads you ever on._

Formal attired waiters and waitresses removed the last of the silverware and china from the table refilling Claudette's guest's glasses with fine wine and spirits including her own. She motioned to the head waiter and asked that they leave the bottles and that their services would no longer be required.

Up until now the topic of discussion was mostly small talk, the sorting of details and the reasons they were all seated at the table. The most surprising of all, at least in Nikola Tesla's mind was how Claudette hinted at her involvement in black box projects including his.

She had channeled the discussion with the finesse of the diplomatic corps, and it had become evident to Tesla, she had rehearsed. The mysterious beauty well known for her portrayal of Cleopatra was after all an actress by trade.

"I would very much like to know now," asked Tesla, "why we are all here?"

Arturo lifted his hand motioning to one of the stewards who was standing by and waiting for his cue.

The steward approached the table and placed a block of stone in front of Nikola Tesla.

"Nikola," asserted Arturo Posnansky, "Please examine the object placed before you and give to me your professional assessment," he spoke in a Bolivian flavored English dialect.

"I'm not an expert in geology, but I have studied the earth forces to some degree." replied Tesla, "This appears to be diorite," reaching into his coat pocket he removed a small steel metric ruler and began measuring. "Yes… ….perfectly aligned. A grove is ten centimeters square with holes three centimeters wide separated by twenty centimeters." Tesla turned to Arturo, "This appears to be diamond tooled diorite."

"That's what my boys had to say about it too," announced General Malin Craig. "What Arturo's about to tell you is going to sound like science fiction, but you need to keep an open mind Nikola, because you're the only man alive that can make hay out of this. That stone sitting in front of you is twelve thousand years old. I don't know of any caveman that had a diamond saw or drill."

"What's more important," insisted Posnansky "is this stone was taken from Puma Punku where there are others just like it at a size and scale that defies all logic. Stonework that makes the Great Pyramid of Giza seem like child's play."

Posnansky, lifted Tesla's ruler from the table. Holding it up to tout an example, "What's even more amazing is they didn't even have one of these." Arturo looked about the table, "but this is only the tip of the iceberg. I believe I have discovered how this was done." He turned to Tesla, "If I may cut to the chase?"

"Please do," replied Tesla listening intently.

"Well sir, I could go into all the background, but what matters most are two parallels. Tiahuanaco and Jericho, worlds apart emerging some ten thousand years before Christ and then around seven thousand years BC both regions underwent an age of pyramids." Arturo smiled, "And they had one other thing in common. Both started as primitive human cultures inside areas of notable seismic activity."

Claudette interjected, "Seismic activity has long been accompanied by the appearance of bright, luminescent, multicolored glowing lights" she reached for Tesla's hand, "We believe the secrets surrounding these ancient civilizations and perhaps others might be found within these energies."

"If it's true Nikola, and these ancients did have access to an energy source capable of cutting through diorite, imagine how much further you could advance the Teleforce weapon," added General Craig.

"I have one question," replied Tesla, "Your premise is intriguing, but why only then, and why only in ancient times?"

Arturo answered as if he knew this would be Tesla's first question, "I have asked myself that question time and again, and I keep coming up with the same conclusion. There has to be some form of intelligence involved. What if sentient geoelectromagnetic lifeforms exist, and what if they surfaced to coexist among an emerging new species of intelligent and self-aware beings like themselves? And what if something happened three thousand years to sever that relationship. Maybe they were captured by the ancient expansionists? In theory it _would_ coincide with the building of the pyramids. And why pyramids? Hypothetically speaking, if they were forced into slavery as artisans, the pyramid shape might have been some kind of warning sign not to interact with our species."

Claudette continued, "Based on scientific evidence the Earth is around 4.6 billion years old. If these beings exist in geological time compared to the human time-line which is two millionths of one percent of theirs, going underground _literally _for millenniums to await our eventual extinction would be inconsequential to them."

"Nikola, lets cut to the chase. If this force exists we need to harness and study it." The General decided there had been enough talk and he didn't want to have to fuss around with the moral implications, "We've secured an area just outside of your old hunting grounds near Colorado Springs where seismic activity is likely in the near future. You're the man for the job, Project Cougar Door is yours." He held out his hand meaning to close the deal, "Will you join us?"

* * *

**Three Years Later**

Tesla relaxed his grip on the grab strap as his car turned back onto the main road. He shook the general's hand one last time in is mind and then put all of this behind him. He used his handkerchief to dry his tired eyes and closed them.

Claudette stood alone at the construct. Her chauffer waited holding the door to the car open for her. "Douglas," she said, "Please go on without me."

"But madam?" he said.

"Please," she answered, "I have made other arrangements, I'll be fine."

"Very well madam, if you are sure."

"Yes I am sure, now please GO!"

"Yes madam." The chauffer returned to the car, closed the passenger door, then got behind the wheel and drove off.

Claudette waited until he was long gone before returning to Cougar Door. "They're gone," she said loud enough to be heard for a distance.

The ground shimmered and two metallic forms rose in front of her, one had been mimicking a rock and the other a patch of weeds.

The one that resumed the form of General Malin Craig was the first to speak, "He remained completely unaware we assumed these identities. Are you certain Tesla will not seek out our true counterparts in the future?"

Claudette looked to both the Arturo and Malin T-1001's, "Yes I am sure, he is an old and broken man. He is returning to New York to continue work on what is left of his death ray, and even if he does try to contact the real General Malin Craig; Craig will think him insane. As for Arturo Posnansky and Claudette Colbert, I assure you he has had quite enough of them."

"Then we have one last task to perform," noted the Arturo T-1001, "The energy cells powering the three electromagnets preventing the neodymium cores from drifting apart are failing. It is time to peform the upgrade."

The T-1001's each took up the three positions where the electromagnet energy cells had been instituted and without any emotion whatsoever fulfilled their programming. They sank into the earth morphing into nuclear power cells for Skynet's Project Cougar Door.

* * *

**January 5, 1979  
Forty One Years Later**

It would be almost a half-century after its installation, that an earthquake would occur under Skynet's Project Cougar Door.

As soon as the earthquake light phenomena started to surface, it was ensnared in Project Cougar Door's oscillating polarity field like unsuspecting flies to a spider's web. As the EQL radiation accumulated it began impacting Cougar Door's magnetics and at the quantum level infused faster than light particles called tachyons within the subatomic layering of the containment field. This unforeseen fusion of tachyons warped the surface of the ground above Cougar Door into a large but shallow concave.

The tectonic forces sent wave after wave of radicals crashing against Cougar Door's containment buffers. It was as if there was some kind of intelligence employing brute force to free the trapped EQL energy and it's orphan tachyons. With each impact the structural integrity of Cougar Door weakened drawing more power from the T-1001 nuclear power cells than could be sustained.

The T-1001's energizing the powerful electromagnetic containment fields fought to harness the intense forces. Three agonizing terminator skulls formed out of the loose dirt above them as they struggled to stay on-line. The first of the three exploded showering lifeless molten metal in all directions. It was followed by the second liquid T-1001 bursting into millions of blazing pieces morphing into a fiery screaming demon like face racing upwards into the sky before evaporating into metallic vapor. The remaining T-1001 sank back into the ground drained of all its remaining energy and self-terminated.

Without the T-1001 energy cells energizing Project Cougar Door's powerful electromagnets, the containment field collapsed releasing the positively charged tachyons. This caused a momentary reverse warping of the surface ground that trampolined earth and vegetation a quarter-mile into the air.

The neodymium transducers buried in the earth had successfully converted waves of earthquake light into glowing electromagnetic plasma, but at their core they were rare earth magnets and they attracted the oppositely charged tachyons to their sky-facing poles. This in effect turned the neodymium transducers into primitive warp engines. And with the loss of power to the electromagnets there was nothing left prevent the hundreds of neodymium transducers from rising out of the ground and warping through the Earth's atmosphere and into space.

The plasma continued to cling to the glowing projectiles even though they were moving faster than the speed of light, and when the neodymium missiles cleared the ionosphere they exploded showering the vacuum of space and Earth's atmosphere with super charged dark matter and depolarized tachyon isotopes.

It was all over in a matter of seconds. No one saw it. No magnanimous discovery was made and what had been Project Cougar Door was nothing more than a great big empty hole in the ground.

* * *

**January 27, 1943  
Thirty Six Years Earlier **

Arthur H. Matthews left the elevator on the 33rd Floor of The New Yorker Hotel. He arrived at the door bearing the number 3327 and knocked on it, but there was no answer. This was not unusual. Tesla is probably tinkering with another experiment, he thought to himself.

It had been several years since Project Cougar Door and the last time he and his teacher actually worked together, but Matthews made his mind up long ago that he would remain the student and loyal to his friend until the very end.

He waited another moment and when Tesla did not answer, he unlocked the door with his own key, just as he had so many times before. "Nikola it's me Arthur - Arthur Matthews don't be alarmed" he announced as he entered.

A heavy scent of ozone filled the occupancy along with the hum of what sounded like a step-up transformer. A sepia tone glow emanated from the adjacent room with irregular strobes tracing about. It was very similar to the effects following the static discharges of the Tesla Coil.

As soon as Mathews entered the room he noticed his mentor lying on the on the floor unmoving. A three dimensional projection was suspended a short distance from his body, Nikola's right hand rested on the controls of what appeared to be a prototype Teslascope transceiver.

Arthur took hold of Tesla's wrist. It was cold to the touch without a pulse. He lowered his head to his friend's chest and could hear no heartbeat. Accepting the obvious Arthur turned his attention to the projection and noticed the word Zeira and a large capital Z on what appeared to be a wall inside the emanation. Arthur tried reaching into the holographic projection, but his reach was met with resistance. The light was solid like a looking glass. He searched about the room for the source of the projection, but the anomaly was self-contained.

Matthews' observations were cut short when the Teslascope crackled and then discharged in an unexpected blast. It startled him at first, but he quickly recognized it was the familiar sound of a paper-wound capacitor exploding from an overload. The projection disappeared with a shower of cindering singed cotton paper shreds spraying about the room. A plume of thick black electrical smoke flooded upward and clinged to the ceiling.

"My God," Arthur H. Matthews exclaimed turning to the lifeless form of his friend and of one of the greatest inventors since Archimedes of Syracuse, "You've made contact with another world!"


	10. Archimedean point

**The Mulholland Scenic Corridor – 2007**

Derek Reese kept playing it over and over in his mind as he worked his way down the slope to the landing below. All he could think of was the failed mission he and Jesse led twenty years in the future. He recalled how his men were cut down by the machines lying in wait and how he and Jesse survived.

Thomas dodged a plasma bolt before it exploded on the ground. "Come on Tommy Boy," he said to himself out loud, "you've been in worse!" He took cover behind a tree while reloading his weapon. "Blake," he cried into his headset, "how am I looking pal?"

Blake had taken a minor hit to the leg, fortunately for him plasma weapons were designed for straight kills and not to wound. It had taken a nice chunk out of his calf, but it had also cauterized the wound. He had just finished pulling off the cap of a pre- filled field syringe with his teeth when Thomas called. Give me a sec, he thought as injected the needle into his injured leg and emptied the contents of the syringe. He felt himself going into minor shock as the medication took effect. He lifted his eyes to get the perimeter reading in his headset for Thomas.

"Blake!" Thomas called, "I think I'm pinned down pal. Can you give me…?" Thomas did not finish his request, a plasma bolt cut through the tree trunk, his back, heart and out of his chest before dissipating off in the distance. Thomas barely felt it, and although it may have seemed he was aware of the gaping hole in his chest before he doubled over. He was already dead.

"Tommy!" Blake cried as he watched the soldier's life sensor fade and an enemy signal appear next to his own. "Oh shit – oh shit!" he exclaimed as the metallic red eyes of a terminator rose in front of him firing its weapon in rapid sequence. Blake didn't have a chance… The machine lifted and dangled his dead body several feet off the ground while it tapped into dead man's headset searching for the locations of the other freedom fighters on the grid while simultaneously feeding that information to the whole of Skynet's surrounding forces.

Derek and Jesse were both surrounded by heavy fire, but had good cover and were well hidden under a rocky ledge. They both turned to each other knowing the worst as Blake and Thomas fell off the grid. "They took a tap sir," Jesse reported as she spat away the soot that had accumulated around her lips. "The metals think they know where we are. They don't. …Blake's decoy rig," she said, "it triggered the moment he died." Her eyes shifted to the left and then the right. It's bought us some time"

Death is the one true constant for resistance fighters and the metals had quickly discovered that tapping into a dead humans gear often betrayed the location of other targets on the grid. The decoy rig was often the resistance fighter's last act of defiance. It could be triggered one of two ways - manually if captured or automatically at the time of death. Once activated it would feed decoy information into the sensor apparatus – an array of phantom targets for the metal's to pursue.

"Not much... No, not really…" Derek battled to keep his cool. "Decoys have fooled them one to many times. Sanchez, Henderson, Nguyen listen up," he called into his headset, "We've lost Blake and Thomas. "Decoy protocol override," he ordered. "I repeat decoy protocol override." Derek could see Jessed didn't agree with him. "Trust me." He said flatly, "We'll get trapped in our own trap if we do any less." If what Derek anticipated held true, they had a better chance of getting of here alive if they followed the presumption the enemy had not been distracted and was still bearing down on their positions.

Moments after he had given the order to hold their positions and maintain radio silence the eerie stillness of a post assault ensued. "Nothing," He whispered, "no movement at all." Then after a few minutes the metals made their move and the attack resumed. Derek was right. Had they trusted in the decoy's they'd all be dead by now.

Sanchez was the first to break radio silence. "Commander," his voice crackled, "Nguyen's been hit. He's been hurt pretty bad sir." The young Vietnamese had taken a shot to his midsection and was spitting up blood. "Gut shot sir!"

Henderson tapped his headset, "Are you in a position to provide us with cover – over."

Jesse replied "we're pinned down ourselves, but will try" She looked to Derek as if he could read her thoughts."

"On the count of three," he said, "One, two…" As Derek and Jesse rose to their feet they both of them heard a sudden burst of static in their ears. It was followed by a blinding light and a wave of compressed energy hurtling them through the air.

Derek and Jesse landed on the ground a short distance from each other. They looked to the stars and then across the clearing to each other. "Hey you guys." Derek managed to say, "Jesse and me..." But there was no one left to hear him, including Jesse who had just fainted. In a bizarre twist Derek caught a glimpse of something just within his peripheral view.

He turned his head and saw what appeared to be a pale skinned red-headed little girl wearing a white laced velvet read dress. "What..?" he managed to ask still lying on his back.

"It's alright," whispered of a little girl in the darkness, "they won't kill us here," she said.

"Who are you?" Derek asked.

The little girl answered, "My name is Savannah Weaver."

"Savannah Weaver, what are you doing here? Where are your parents?"

"I have no parents," The child's reply was as dark as the night and as threatening as little Alia Atreides announcing to the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV that her brother Paul "Muad'dib" Atreides had arrived to seal the fate of Frank Herbert's Dune. "I was asked to wait for you here by _you_ Derek Reese," she smiled hauntingly, "and by John Connor."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Derek squinted and examined the child more closely. "I've never seen you before."

"I assure you, what I am telling you is true," she replied. "I am the reason your John Connor sent you here and I am what your soldiers died for: A terminator that has been reprogrammed to side with the resistance and unlike the flawed T-scrubs my allegiance programming is permanent."

"All terminator models," she said, "are vulnerable to the same exploit used to modify me," the child smiled. "Skynet cannot fight what it does not know," she claimed.

Suddenly out of the darkness seemingly endless rows of blue lights rose cowering up from behind the child. They were the visual arrays of the very terminators attacking only moments before, the blue lights clearly indicating they were now functioning in override mode. "These terminators are no longer a threat to you. I have reprogrammed them."

"I don't understand," Derek said barely able to speak as he fought to stay conscious, "How?"

"Too much," she said, "First you must meet my John Connor a few miles from this location and give him this in the year 2007." She revealed a T-888 chip in her palm, but did not give it to him. "And there is one last thing you asked me to do," she said pointing in Jesse's direction. "She _is_ pregnant with your child."

Derek had always thought it was some kind of weird dream. The only concrete memory he had from the mission was waking up days later at Serrano Point alone. And now he was here twenty years in the past hoping to answer the lingering question. Was any of what he experienced real? He was just a few miles from the location where the child machine said he'd be. He looked up at the sign that read "No Trespassing – Designated Nature Preserve," this was the place. He checked his pocket making sure he had Vic's chip. A day hadn't gone by that he didn't want to destroy it, but if the child cyborg was telling the truth the resistance was going to need it.

All the pieces were in play. Derek figured Sarah and John Connor would be showing up at any minute now and he'd finally get to the bottom of this mystery. He also thought about Jesse and how much he missed her. She was somewhere in the future on a secret mission aboard the USS Jimmy Carter and he was here in the year 2007 thinking to himself, he'd never see his soulmate again. "Have yourself checked," he remembered encouraging her the last time he saw her, but she told him he was bonkers. Since that day he has remained haunted by how the light sparkled in her eyes before she kissed him goodbye.

Derek could hear a vehicle approaching from the distance but by the sound of it; it wasn't the Connor's Dodge Ram. It sounded more like an old panel van rattling its way along the dirt road running the length of the fence. When it finally turned the corner he saw that it was a black 1950 Ford pickup.

The truck stopped and white haired man in his late sixties wearing grounds keeper's uniform got out and approached Derek. "Mind me asking what you're doing here Mister?"

"Just trying to figure out how to scale this fence," Derek answered.

"That'll get you ten to sixty in the county lockup son," the grounds keeper countered.

Derek studied the old man's face closely before confronting him, "What you say we cut the bullshit, John," Derek couldn't believe his eyes. "and you tell me what the hell is going on? You can't possibly be in your sixties and yet here you are and what about your sixteen year old counterpart?

"Well Derek," a woman's voice said behind him with the unmistakable sound of a shotgun shell being chambered. "therein lies the rub,"

Derek turned to the woman with the shotgun, "And _who the hell are you_?"

"Fine Thank you, and _how the hell are you?"_ smiled the elderly woman, "John said you wouldn't know me, but I _do_ know you, or used to know another you in my time. The Derek I know called me his favorite rat catcher." The older woman looked him over, "damn you look just like him, but you smell a hell of a lot worse." She laughed jokingly. "By the way," she lowered the shotgun having never really pointed at Derek to begin with and extended a hand, "I'm Riley, Riley Dawson Connor, and my husband and I are here because we've been on a mission to save the future for the last forty seven years."

The elderly John Connor walked past Derek to stand next to Riley, "I know this is a little much to take in, but I'm the very same John Connor you took to the park on my birthday. But I'm not the same John Connor who's on vacation right now with his mother and Cameron. Your John Connor isn't struggling with having killed a man on his sixteenth birthday as I did. You see Derek, Riley and I..." John's words hung in the air, "Well, What you say we take a ride and bring you up to speed on what we're all doing here?"

**New York**** January 12, 1943**

"This is a most unusual request Ambassador Kosanovic," replied the funeral director of the Ferncliff Cemeteryand Crematorium charged with task of cremating the final remains of Nikola Tesla."

"None the less," responded the Yugoslavian ambassador and Nikola Tesla's nephew, "My uncle's wishes are explicit; his remains are to be buried anonymously in the plot he purchased. You are to cremate an empty coffin. The ashes are to be placed in a black onyx urn and entrusted to Doctor Mica Trbojevic who will see the urn is shipped to Belgrade. I believe you have been compensated sufficiently to have secured your confidence and silence in this matter."

"Very well," answered the funeral director, "I will see to it that Mister Tesla's final wishes and your instructions are handled discretely. An empty coffin will be incinerated during the private service at the crematory chapel, and his body will be buried in an unmarked grave."


	11. Vesicles of Time

**The Future Parallel**

The blue plasma's atmospheric discharges engulfed Catherine Weaver and John Conner, while the time displacement bubble dematerialized all non-organic and exanimate organics within its containment field. Cameron's lifeless shell, John's clothing and the table and chairs were all consumed by the time machine as supplemental fuel. In an instant the computer room, Sarah Connor and James Ellison disappeared and were replaced by subterranean ruins of the Zeira Corporation.

Both Catherine and John found themselves huddled naked within a ring about 18 feet in circumference with flames evenly spaced about every 18 inches along the perimeter. The concrete floor within the circle was fractured forming a parabolic indentation beneath their feet. This was all that remained of the great machine once hidden beneath raised floor of one of Zeira Corporation's black-box laboratories. It was here where Project Babylon combined the early 21st century artificial intelligence of the Turk, the humanity and theological beliefs of James Ellison, the innocence of Savannah Weaver and T-888 technology to animate the modern day Prometheus called John Henry.

John Connor trembled as he struggled to regain his senses while the T-1000's neural net chronometer deciphered where and when it was. They had arrived post Judgment Day. It became more self-evident when two shots of heavy artillery impacting the surface of Zeira Corporation's skeletal remains thundered down from above like the lightning strikes of a distant storm.

Realizing Cameron was missing John was about to insist on answers from Catherine, but in her present state of undress he shied away instinctively. All the same he needed to know Cameron's whereabouts and it outweighed any modesty he might have felt. He returned his attention to Catherine unimpeded. With little more than mock surprise he realized Catherine had instantly outfitted herself in post apocalyptic garb. "Where's Cameron?" he persisted as she glanced past him, "Where's her body?"

"It doesn't go through," iced the T-1001 emotionless as it looked directly into John's eyes. It was the first time it had a real chance to size up the messiah named John Connor. This human followed her through time to save one of her own, and further he knew she was a T-1001, and did not fear her - perhaps even trusted her. Maybe he is the one?

In the distance they could hear footsteps approaching, voices, and barking dogs. John looked frantically for something to wear. He searched about the concrete lair and lying on an old bed he noticed a full length jacket. He wrapped himself in it before he huddled to the floor. He noticed his feet were powdered with a layer of gray concrete dust as Catherine retreated to the shadows. They waited for the search team to pass and put distance between them.

As soon as John felt they were alone again, he emerged from his hiding place. Catherine approached him from behind as if she were his shadow. Suddenly she felt less certain of herself. There was something about this place she felt she was unprepared for.

They'd only walked a short distance before John was spotted by Luu Trang Nguyen a well armed insurgent advancing on his position. Catherine morphed into the background before Nguyen could catch sight of her. She could have easily stayed and slayed him, but decided otherwise. She felt that somehow this freedom fighter might be John's best chance of acclimating himself among is own kind in this God-forsaken place.

"Got one, the insurgent shouted "Got one!" the sheer terror in his voice amplified his uncertainty. Nguyen trained his weapon on the intruder.

"One what?" asked John, "What?" facing his aggressor his eyes darted abaft fearing Catherine was about to do her worst, but she was gone leaving him to fend alone. "Please I'm not metal." He maintained.

"Don't move," ordered Nguyen knowing if this uninvited guest were metal he'd have to fire off a rapid sequence of rounds and retreat simultaneously or he would be killed. All the metals needed was a slight motion forward and they could launch at a soldier so quickly the kill would almost always be made before a single round could be fired. Nguyen had witnessed it before and he wasn't about to be the next victim. "Don't move!" He warned.

"I swear I haven't got anything. I'm - I'm Human."

"Don't move because I will blast you!" There was finality in Nguyen's voice this time.

Time stood still for John as he stood motionless staring down Nguyen and his unsteady weapon. Then the unimaginable occurred, his uncle - his dead uncle Derek stepped out of same passageway as Luu Trang Nquyen. He rushed past the insurgent and pushed the barrel of the weapon trained on John down-wards. Derek ordered the soldier to stand down.

How was this possible? He and Catherine must have traveled to a time and place where Derek hadn't or had yet to time travel to the past. He was clearly alive. And if that were not miraculous enough, John thought. What are the odds of meeting him here and now? They had to be astronomical. Then John remembered something Cameron once told him when he asked her if there was a way to go back in time to prevent his father's murder.

"His murder was meant to be." She told him, "Kyle Reese cannot be saved. Time flows like parallel rivers never crossing paths. Yet sometimes the waters break and splash from one river to another. It cannot stay. Time is auto-correcting and will not stop until the water levels in all the rivers are the same again." Cameron spoke with practiced emphasis. "The death of Kyle Reese is a fixed point in time. One must always die. You can't have both." She frowned noting John's seemingly in puzzlement. Not quite sure she had stated the temporal theorem in terms he understood, Cameron decided on another strategy.

"Do you know John F Kennedy?" Cameron asked him, "Do you remember John F. Kennedy?" She rambled, "John F. Kennedy was the American president assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. His assassination is also a fixed point in time." She paused, "If the assassination were to be prevented, the temporal flow would compensate to preserve as much of the original time-line as possible." She studied John, still unable to determine if he had grasped the substantive. "It still happens or something just as bad instead or maybe worse."

It then occurred to Cameron she had unintentionally happened upon an even better example. Her mind had gleaned a reference to Cape Kennedy Space Center while recalling all things Kennedy. It was a more present day example and it made her point for her. "The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster," She said with confidence. "During the early trials of the first temporal displacement system, a rogue technician and former student of Christa McAuliffe tried to go back in time to stop it. She failed and the quantum disturbance was so great that another one, the Space Shuttle, Columbia was destroyed to compensate." Cameron stared, "Instead of one bad thing there were two." Her facial muscles twitched scantily before she composed her next sentence. "Changing the wrong things in time can be a real bitch whore." She said.

"John Connor the opposite is true for you. You are not meant to die," She revealed, "Your matter and energy ratio is constant. The temporal flow adjusts differently for constants, but if you die early, you will still die." Cameron drew closer to him. "Don't die John Connor." she said, "It makes keeping you alive difficult for me."

John exhaled pondering the thought. "Did I die before?" It was a mistake to ask. "No wait!" John held up is hand to stop Cameron from answering, "I don't want to know."

Cameron had no intention of answering him. Instead she reached for John's forearm and lowered it to his side. Her delicate fingers followed down past his wrist until her hand rested in his. She maneuvered her body in closer to him. The subtly of her perfume amplified his senses. Aroused, John resisted the urge to pull away. "Agreed, not knowing" she answered softly. Her bedroom eyes were spellbinding. Then she leaned in closer "it's good not to know." she whispered in his ear. John's skin quivered in horripilation as her words caressed his skin. Then there was an uncomfortable silence as she stepped backward. Pulling away she assumed a more machine like stance. She pursed her lips and tilted her head. Ignoring the puzzled look on John's face, Cameron zeroed in on his eyes. His dilated pupils and elevated vitals confirmed what she already knew. John Connor was attracted to her, but what she really wanted to know, was did he love her?

He had traveled through the barriers of time leaving his mother behind in the past and now he faced the realization it was all for nothing - Cameron was gone. Did he do it for love? At present he was trying to connect all the dots. This encounter with Derek was more than sheer coincidence he thought. If Cameron's teachings held true, the rivers of time had united them. Perhaps - not all for nothing.

"Look into his eyes" Derek said, "He's got about as much metal in him as you do." Derek approached John and stopped once he stood toe to toe with him. He studied John's features and thought, there was something - something about this stranger...

"Derek?" Despite all John had learned from Cameron about the conundrums of time travel, he could not help but be astonished and elated to see Derek Reese alive again.

"Yeah" Derek answered? Who the hell was this kid why did he seem so familiar and how did he know his name?

"John," he said, "John Connor," he seemed to infer, "you know me."

"I know a lot of people, kid" Derek answered, "I don't know you." He turned to Nguyen and anyone else in earshot, "Anybody heard the name John Connor?"

"Well," Derek said, "You know what? I think you're going to be famous. My brother's back," he gestured aft, "and you're wearing his coat."

John glanced past Derek and saw his father Kyle Reese for the very first time. He was wearing a heavy brow. Following closely behind him was a small contingency of insurgents, and then he saw her. It was Cameron. She had appeared out of the shadows leading a cyborg detection canine, but when she knelt and caressed the animal she displayed a quality of tenderness Cameron had never emulated before. A trait he felt was unquestionably human.

John was torn between reaching out to her and meeting his would be father for the first time, but he knew better than to act impulsively. He also knew indecision often came with a price. Although John was more experienced than his years and may have mastered some of the finer aspects of observation, he had yet to fully assimilate the preemptive strategies of chess into his fight against the future; nothing was more evident, than how he floundered the outing of Jessie Flores and her _long con_ to pit him against Cameron.

It was due to his inactions Riley Dawson was dead. He could have prevented it. He could have ended her charade from the very start, but instead he played along until he lost his way, and behaving more like a pawn than the future leader of the resistance. He allowed himself to held captive by a quality of love he felt for Riley and the affection he denied Cameron. In the end he was lost to both and both paramours were lost to him, but none of it mattered anymore. John had begun to believe that anyone he cared about or anyone who cared about him always died. The realization was mostly teenage angst for his part, but it was also the first intimation of a future savior's determination to deny the sacrificial lamb.

"Meet John Connor," Derek announced to his brother."

"John who," Kyle asked stopping abruptly within arm's reach of the interloper wearing his overcoat, "John w_hat - you say_?"

"Connor," John emphasized, "My name is John Connor?" and with a leap of faith he added, "I believe you may know my mother."

"The hell you say!" Kyle charged John clutching the lapels of the coat with one hand and thrusting John against a concrete pillar. "Did the counter-insurgency send you. Did they put you up to this?" he shouted, slamming the back of John's head against the cement column and knocking him unconscious. Without a second thought Kyle backhanded him across the face breaking his lip open and bloodying his nose. "Wake up you little bastard!" He cursed as crimson spilled from John's nose and blood frothed around his lips. John's eyelids fluttered as he returned to agonizing consciousness.

Kyle's reaction to John caught everyone by surprise especially Derek who admitted to himself he might be wrong about the kid, but from where he stood he was harmless. Apparently Kyle thought otherwise and was going beat whatever it was that set him off out of John. "Hey Kyle, cool it bro," Derek tried to pull his brother away from John. "He's got nothing..."

Kyle hadn't said a word to anyone about the mission. All anyone knew for sure was he was pretty broken up about it. "Back off Derek," he ordered pulling his magnum from its holster and jarring it under John's chin! "You better start talking kid or I'm going to blow your fucking head off!"

"Please, I'm John Connor - John Connor," he gasped trying to clear the blood in his throat and nostrils.

Kyle tripped the weapon's safety, "Sarah Connor is dead you son of a bitch." There was both contempt and anguish in his voice. "I couldn't save her." Kyle gritted his teeth. "Now you tell me who put you up to this and tell me who the hell you really are or you're going to die where you stand!"

"Security Trust" John answered. It was all he could think of! Kyle Reese must have had a fail safe and by the rivers of time, the same time machine Cameron used during their escape from 1999 to the year 2007. It was an unprecedented and timely epiphany. John somehow realized it was never meant for them, it had been put there originally for Kyle Reese. "It's how you came back" John struggled to keep from spitting up blood, "Isn't it!" His lips trembled as he prayed to heaven he was right.

_**In the 2007 parallel where Derek Reese has met the elderly John Connor and Riley Dawson** _

Riley Dawson Connor and her husband John cleared the dining room table. "...and that's why we picked Ismael." she said.

Ismael who was now in his early eighties sat across from Derek Reese. "It started as a matter of convenience," he said. Ismael handed Derek a newspaper from May 16th, 1962. The ink was fresh and the pulp bone white, by all appearances it had been printed that day. Ismael explained to Derek the newspaper from the day after he encountered what he thought was a UFO.

"That was forty-five years ago," He said. "The next thing I knew, I woke up," he nodded in the direction of the elderly Connors, "and they handed it to me." He unfolded it and added, "This article about a fatality on a rural Seneca County road the night before," he coughed, "is mine. I should have died that night, Mr. Derek, but John and Riley had other ideas." he tapped his finger on the article "They needed an inside man on a contract won by the Fostoria Vault Company for a Los Angeles savings and loan installation, and since I was half-owner the business at the time. They shanghaied me," he laughed sarcastically, "and we put their time machine among other things from the future in the vault of the Security Trust of Los Angeles in 1963.

Ismael welcomed the fact that Derek didn't seem surprised at all by what anyone else would have considered genuine cockamamie bullshit. "I figured it was a better deal than pushing up daisies." He chuckled. "Needless to say that article about my untimely death was never written - at least not within the bubble. That's why it hasn't aged - some sort of mumbo-jumbo time displacement expanse these two scoundrels came up to bridge the installation across multiple time parallels..."

**_Back in the future Parallel _**

Kyle's face drew a blank as he eased his grip on John and lowered his weapon, "Security Trust - passage." he said with a vacant stare "It's how I came back." Kyle leaned up against the column next to John, "How did you know?"

"How? What?" Derek asked "Security Trust? Where the hell is Security Trust Passage?"

Luu Trang shouted out, "Not on any of the maps I have Captain - could be counter-insurgency though!"

Cameron's twin reached past Kyle and handed John a semi-clean rag so he could wipe the blood from his face.

"How about you," Derek asked the retreating young woman, "have you ever heard of a Security Trust Passage?"

She answered him by shaking her head "No," as she retreated quietly.

Derek looked to Kyle. "Get back from where?"

Kyle felt as if he was going mad, "It's not on any map." he cried. "I blew it to hell!"

John wiped the blood from his face and cleared his nose. "Derek," he said, "He's disoriented... It's not like that." John's eyes shifted upward, "This is going to be hard to understand."

"...or believe I'll bet!" He added.

"...or believe. I admit it!" John pleaded. "but I am here to help. I may be the only person alive who can." John paused catching his breath, "Please what harm would there be in a small leap of faith?"

Kyle shook his head. "Where is she?" He took a step backward and dropped to his knees, "She was just here." He ran the fingers of his free hand through his hair and lowered his weapon to the ground. "What is happening to me?" He whispered, "where is Sarah?"

John hunched down to Kyle's level and gripped him by the shoulder's. "Kyle, listen to me. You can still save her!" he maintained, "but you have to put things right," he said. "Kyle, you have to put things right."

John had little more to go by than what must have happened to the time-line after Kyle failed to save Sarah. He remembered what he'd learned from one of the few times Cameron opened up to him on temporal precepts. "Time paradoxes do not exist," she said. "Remember, you cannot change the rivers of time, but you can fool them. Just like any living thing, time can make mistakes." She smiled gently, "Just remember all it takes is moving a little water from one river to another and then putting it back again to make it work."

On the table were three glasses. "One is half-full," Cameron said, "and the other is half-empty." She combined the contents of the two glasses into the empty third glass. "What is it?" She asked, "A negative combined with an equal positive is a zero, isn't it?" Then why is the thrid glass full? If John hadn't known better, he'd have sworn she was joking.

"Context - John Connor. Time can be fooled with context."

Cameron's strange lesson resonated in John's thoughts. Context - here he was in a time-line where the John Connor of the future had just been erased, but replaced by another, himself. And then there was Kyle. The part of him from original time-line quickly fading in favor of the new matrix. Context was all John had and it shaped his next step. "Remember the message?" he said, "The future is not set. There is no fate, but what we make for ourselves. It's what you told her."

"How could you know that?" Kyle lamented, "She meant everything to me - so strong - so beautiful. She saved me and it killed her. It should have been me!" Kyle lifted and pointed the blaster to his temple. "It should have been _me_ damn it!"

"Kyle, listen to me. You can still complete the mission." John assured him. "You don't want to do this."

"Enough of this bullshit," Derek shouted. "The woman's dead, are you fucking deaf!" he exclaimed before striking like a viper and snatching the weapon out of Kyle's hand. "The only thing a leap of faith is good for is getting people killed," he spat.

"Derek Reese, you're seven years older than Kyle aren't you? When you were eleven years old you taught Kyle how to play baseball. Have you ever told anyone that? " Not waiting for an answer John turned back to Kyle, "There is no fate... Who said that to you?"

Derek kicked at John knocking him off balance with the sole and heal of his boot, "I don't care what you think you know, kid. I said, I've had enough already!"

"Have you, Derek?" John shouted as he grappled with inertia and balance to regain his footing, "How about it, do you remember who said it?" John exclaimed, "or have you forgotten too? John spun around and confronted the others, "How about it, do any of you remember? There is no fate, but what we make for ourselves. Who..?"

"I do. I remember everything," Kyle answered as he lifted his head. He had been pushed until he plugged in to being caught between multiple realities. One where the John Connor of the future sent him back in time to save Sarah Connor, another where he returned after her death and John Connor no longer existed. _And_ Kyle was also aware of an emerging third parallel, "John Connor" he said "John Connor told me" He looked to the stranger standing before him, "It was you, but older. You sent me back to save her." His eyes widened, "how is this possible." he shook his head "Your mother - you were never born." He stood up. "The John Connor I knew is gone - erased. _You shouldn't be here and I shouldn't remember any of this!_"

With three separte time displacment events: Kyle's, John and Catherine's and John Henry's occuring in the exact same proximity. The moment Kyle became aware he was entwined in three separate universes, his brain-wave patterns became a catalyst retriggering a region of reality in severe temporal flux into a state of realignment. "Context, John Connor."

Kyle and John stood facing each other enveloped within an elongating spiraling tunnel - a wormhole cutting through the parallels of the multiverse. At first from their vantage points nothing had changed, but then them time began moving around them like the cells of a Rubik's cube twisting and spinning in and out of place in a superluminal whirl.

"B u t I a m h e r e" John said in slow motion, "S a r a h C o n n o r i s m y m o t h e r." he hesitated as the universe spun around them. It felt like hours passed before he finished saying, "I' m y o u r s o n!"

Time had slowed to a crawl. Kyle no longer trusted his senses. He was in agony. He felt weak and mortally wounded. He fought to hear John's words but they were shattered by the sound of metal pounding against metal just beyond the factory floor. "Wait" he said as he flipped the switches and powered up the automation systems.

"What are you doing?" Sarah asked him struggling to catch her breath. Motion trails loomed behind her and Kyle like ghosts from their past.

Kyle moved to another control panel flipping on every switch he could find to power up the factory to a deafening roar. "Cover..." he told Sarah, "so he can't track us."

John grew frantic unable to assist as the automated facility began powering up, all the while the metal doors leading to the fabrication center thundered from the pounding of a terminator's fists. John cried out, but his voice fell silent trapped within the zero space of the time vortex.

Kyle's hands moved rapidly across the last of the controls as Sarah reached for him, "Come on" she begged for what seemed like an eternity, as the metal doors began to open, "Come on!" but Kyle was weakening and fell to the floor unconscious, "No Kyle" she cried in disbelief. "Come on!" she screamed pulling at the lapels of his jacket, "Come on!" she heaved.

Kyle's head fell backward, "Leave me here." he sighed.

Sarah screamed as the terminator's hand reached through the shredded metal door.

Tears filled John's eyes when he realized what he was about to witness. What had he done? Once again the consequences of his actions would result in an unspeakable death.

"Move it Reese, on your feet soldier!" Sarah ordered. "On your feet, move it!"Sarah shouted as she pulled his father out of the depths of unconsciousness and back to his feet.

"Run," John screamed "RUN!" as he saw the T-800 model 101 pursue his parents weaving their way through the rows and columns of robotics and hydraulic presses branching off the factory floor. "Behind you!" he cried as the metal skeleton caught them in a dead-end corridor beneath an overhanging walkway.

Kyle turned around just in time, putting himself between Sarah and the machine. Sarah backed up the stairs behind him and he followed holding a steel tube he'd picked up along the way - his eyes locked on the demon machine as he and Sarah made it to the the otherside of the walkway. The terminator haulted its approach stopping on the opposite end of the narrow passage.

John watched helplessly as his father stood on one side of the catwalk and T-800 stood on the other for the final showdown.

"Run Sarah," Kyle urged her, but she refused. When he noticed she was still by behind him he ordered her as if all creation depended upon it, "RUN!" he shouted as the terminator closed in for the kill.

Kyle swung the steel tube like a baseball bat inflicting as much damage he could until the machine struck him down. Broken and bleeding internally Kyle knew there was nothing more he could do to save Sarah if he lived, but there was hope for her if he died. He reached into his coat and ignited a pipe bomb and when the terminator drew close enough he reached pushing the exploding bomb inside the machine's rib cage.

"No!" John screamed as he witnessed the force of the fireball hurdle his father over the steel rails, killing him before he hit the factory floor, but not before the bomb blew the terminator apart.

For an imperceptible moment the universe blanked out and came back into focus again. Kyle Reese had returned to 1984, where he died saving the life of Sarah Connor and John found himself filling some very big shoes. The temporal flux and the convergence of time lines initiated by Kyle's brain waves succeeded in rebooting, but did not restore the original time-line. Post judgment day was different now, very different.

Derek stood at the side of the young leader. "Really, a flak jacket for your birthday!" He said in disbelief. "You've told me so much about your mother I feel like I know her, but you've never said a word to me about your father. Why not?" he asked.

John took a deep breath and paused taking a moment before answering Derek. He felt an inexplicable sense of deeply rooted personal loss. Perhaps witnessing the death of his father from within the vortex still lingered within his subconscious. Perhaps it was someting more. When John finally answered Derek it was something he recalled from a fleeting memory, "It's because, one must die." He sighed exiguously, "I can't have both." He drew in a breath and noticed Allision walking past him with the canine he'd assigned her. John called out to her without forethought, "Thank you Allison!" he said.

He could see by her reaction she didn't quite understand the overture, "for the cloth." He smiled.

Allison simply nodded in John's direction and smiled a gentle smile. What did he mean by f_or the cloth - _she thought, what cloth? Maybe he had mistaken her for someone else.

In this new version of John's universe Cameron was never a part of his life. She didn't exist to him. John's eyes followed Allison as she walked away. Suddenly he felt what could best be described as Déjà vu "_You_ can fool time John Connor," A young woman who looked just like her in his mind's eye said, "but it comes at a price." And then she was gone.


	12. Genesis

**Cleveland Ohio 1999**

If a keyboard were drums Stephen Lucas would be Neil Peart. Everyone in the cubicles surrounding him sat quietly listening to the drum solo, waiting for the last keystroke. "Ok, ok! I think I've got it. Does everyone have the Alpha update installed?"

One of the programmers in the room called out, "For the millionth time – everyone upgraded to Alpha revision during the roll-out last night. - Asshole."

"Don't be a dick – I'm only following the initiation checklist you pixie prick's put in the launch directives." Lucas argued, "So piss off! I'm going to do one last confirmation request - otherwise I'm uplinking the turnkey firmware revision to the satellite again, and that's that."

Arnold (Rimmer) Schwartz yelled from the next cubicle, "Oh come on Stephen! The firmware version number is correct on all the node screens. Can't we just get on with this already?"

"It doesn't mean shit until the satellite transponder says it is." Lucas pushed the square red button on the voice over IP box. "Rio, have any of you seen a firmware acknowledgment from the sat?"

Mitch jumped in from abroad, "No acks, but the Australia outpost is showing all hop relay times below point one milliseconds. Geeze I wonder why?"

"Rio is showing relay times near zero too?" announced the black box. "Amigos - if the firmware didn't take, then where's the diagnostic feedback loop delays?"

"Alright, you're right! "shouted Lucas, "The older firmware had a five millisecond delay. I get it. If the upgrade didn't take, then where did it go?" Stephen looked to the ceiling in mock prayer. "I guess it's time to take a leap of faith. Is everyone is in agreement? The version numbers on the nodes then?"

The teams response to Lucas was a practiced one. This wasn't the first time his anal tendencies (or mostly just his way of getting under their skin) had them flustered. "YES!" they all shouted in unison.

Lucas had one final retort, "Sure - what's the worst that can happen you guys?" His sarcasm continued, "Rimmer's dad will just write us another thirty thousand dollar check to pay for three more hours of up-link time."

"Good one Stephen," Rimmer shouted, "Right after he kills both of us for squandering his retire..." Rimmer cut himself off in midsentence. "Hey Jedi-ass," an unflattering nickname he called Stephen most of the time, "did you cut the signal?"

"Damn it!" Lucas yelled. "What did I tell you?" He howled. It was good thing they hadn't gone live yet. Rimmers dad didn't have another thirty grand to give them. "It's dropping friggen packets." Stephen's fingers danced across the keys as he highlighted a section of source code. The display on the computer screen blinked repeatedly. Something had filled the cache in the satellite cipher buffers. "Okay you guys, I think I'm seeing why we haven't gotten a confirmation on the firmware. The sat-buffer is full. I'm going to flush it to a virtual on my local hard disk."

Moving live encrypted data from an orbiting satellite to an earth-bound computer on the fly was like performing open heart surgery on a thousand patients with one scalpel and all at the same time. The variables were staggering, the odds of succeeding minimal, but Lucas was no ordinary programmer and performing this operation was not beyond the scope of his abilities. He just needed to be spot on. "Holy crap," he said with one last keystroke, "look at those little bastards go." The data lept from the cipher buffer in space to his hard drive like Disney lemmings.

All screens flashed like strobes and then came the message and unified gasps of relief, "Firmware update complete!"

"That was really weird." There was absolute silence, not a word from anyone. "Beuller - Beuller," Stephen said, looking up from his computer monitor, "B-U-E-L-L-E-R! Did everyone get the confirmation message?"

"Yeah, but what were those bursts all about." It was Mitch from Australia who got back to business first. "It looks good though. The readings are stable in Oz!"

"...looks great in Rio!"

Rimmer yelled, "We're seeing resource distribution in London, Canada, Czechoslovakia and Hong Kong - and some of those are drone betas. Hey check it out, I'm getting stat updates on the TSRP screen saver."

"Yeah, it's being pushed straight from the mainframe." Stephen laughed, "looking good. I didn't expect the screen savers to update that fast. Well hell guys, I think we've got it." If the screen savers are updating - I'm confirming the turnkey firmware as live and switching to a real-time connection with SAIP. Are you guys ready to make some history?"

Mitch could be heard over the VoIP, "There's going to be a bloodbath in Cleveland tonight!"

"I've got Mountain View on the headset" Stephen smiled, "they're saying the CPU loads dropped at the mark and throughput is pure as driven snow. The screen saver works and we''ve received their blessing to go into the attack phase." Stephen Lucas was feeling taller. His team had done it. He was General George Patton and it was time for war, "BUT THERE'S TO BE NO KILLING UNTIL I GIVE THE ORDER!" He shoulted. "Hey Mitch we're probably going to lose our voice over IP connection once the shooting starts, but I'm going to try to keep the channel open so you can at least hear the lamentations of _DEATH!_

"Ha!" Mitch Laughed, "You Americans have all the fun!"

Stephen yelled, "GAME ON!" as jumped up on his cubicle's desktop armed with a neon green and pink Nerf machine gun. He looked down at his target, "HEY ARNOLD!" he shouted as he fired off a round of sponge bullets hitting him on the top of the head. "NERF BATTLE!" he cried out so everyone could hear!

Arnold grabbed his chest as if he had been fatally injured and then with a forced Austrian accent called out in defiance. "I'll be back." He dodged around the corner with his duffel bag in hand. Within seconds the floor of the Cleveland computer lab was showered in Nerf bullets coming from all directions.

Stephen Lucas and his team of programmers and engineers had dedicated all of their time for the last couple of years in the development of The Shared Resource Project (TSR) for The Search for Alien Intelligence Program and it just went live. For the moment only a handful of turnkey computers had the screen saver installed that shared their computer's disk space and CPU power with the SAIP mainframe, but by tomorrow there would be thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands from all over the world downloading the beta application and sharing their computer's resources with the TSRP Internet grid.

There was so much commotion in the think tank, the guys wouldn't have noticed if there was an earthquake. This was a pinnacle moment in their careers and they were observing the Nerf battle tradition to celebrate thier success. Outside the office building were a few college students and serveral reporters who had been leaked of the project's eminent success today. They stood outside with their noses pressed up against the glass like children at Macy's during the holidays and thinking to themselves, this was something really cool.

Stephen was the central target of the Nerf assault. He was being bombarded with fire from all positions. Several sponge bullets bounced off of him and hit his computer keyboard causing its speakers to squawk angrily. Not unexpected - this sort of thing was a perfectly normal occurrence during a Nerf war, and he paid it no attention. Only this time (maybe he should have) the impact initiated a transference sequence. The data still resident in live memory – was more than just the firmware confirmation message he'd assumed it was. This thing was spreading like a virus, and when the keyboard was impacted the keystrokes switched open a connection directly to the SAIP mainframe.

A message flashed on Stephen's computer screen, "BULK DATA INSERTION ACCEPTED BY SAIP MAINFRAME - END OF LINE."

The phone rang and Stephen tapped his headset and fired off a round, "Lucas…. What? Who? Hold on a sec... HOLD YOUR FIRE!" He looked to the window and saw a guy with the cell phone peeping through the blinds. "It's the cable news guy." He pointed to the window, "He wants to come in and interview us." He jumped off his desk and fully opened the blinds waving to the inquisitive faces outside. The rest of the development team joined him. "What you say? Should we let them in?"


	13. Another's

James Ellison listened semiconsciously to the news channel while he studied the evidence he had on the fugitive Sarah Connor and her son John.

"Folks we _are_ inside the command centre of The Shared Resource Project. - Home of the Search for Alien Intelligence Program. It's from here where computers from all over the world (even your computer) can participate in the search for extraterrestrial life. If you think this all sounds like a bunch of science fiction, I assure you it's not. With me today is Stephen Lucas leader of the team of programmers and scientists responsible for it all. Stephen what can you tell our viewers about how this all came about and what it all really means?"

"I wish I could say it was all in the name of science, but SAIP was running out of funds we offered a revolutionary solution we thought they could afford and _here we are_! SAIP is now benefiting from the TSR program which allows any computer with an internet connection to assist by donating unused computer power to process extraterrestrial information collected from radio telescopes and satellites orbiting the earth. It is truly remarkable stuff and that's not all..."

Lila Ellison walked into the living room and began to massage James' shoulders; she recognized the familiar face of Stephen Lucas. She'd met him several months ago at FBI headquarters. "Stevie Lucas and The TSR project. That kid's got his fingers in a lot of pies. The FBI just signed a contract to use the shared resource program to assist in international fingerprint database searches."

James reached back and lifted her hand from his shoulder. He was too absorbed in his work for a massage. "That's what I've been told… I hear they've also signed a contract with Alexandria." He looked up to see his wife standing behind him. "Honey I've got to get through this evidence. Can we do this tomorrow?"

"James, you promised!"

"Honey, I know I promised, but I've..."

"James I don't think you know what that word means anymore. What about yesterday and the day before or have you forgotten what tomorrow means too?" She wanted her words to cut deep, but she felt no reach. "I'm still going out tonight." What she really wanted to tell him was she was pregnant, and worse – he would know the child was not his. They had not had sex in months. She looked to him for a reaction from James, but there was nothing, "and I'm probably going to have a few drinks at Milo's," she expected some hint of disapproval from James. "I'm probably going to get hit on by strange men." …still nothing. She was at wit's end. "I'm glad you have so much trust in me not to care, _but trust_… It isn't enough..." She shook her head.

"Lila that's unfair. You know how much…" He continued to study, lost in the print on the pages before him. "But right now..!"

"Right now you need me somewhere else. I understand." Lila collected her coat. "The truth might be out there James, but there's a time and a place for finding it! You've lost YOURSELF…"

The only voice left in the room was coming from the television. "We're also hoping the project will contribute greatly to the building the digital equivalent of the library of Alexandria. Starting tomorrow internet users will be able to go to their ISP homepage and opt-in to become a part in this latest evolution in super computing."

James looked away from the pile of papers and into Lila's welling eyes. He had lost himself in this case. Failing was not in his vocabulary, yet he found himself surrounded by it. It did not occur to him it also included his marriage. For him it was all about his inablity to close the case. Yet he took pause and pondered. Maybe to find the truth - what he needed was less tangible than facts and evidence. Maybe a diversion could help in solving the case. "Of course," he smiled, "I'll get my coat." Yes, every gambler knows - if you're on a losing streak, the worst thing you can do is to keep wagering.

As James disappeared behind the closet door to fetch his overcoat Lila used a finger to wipe a tear forming on the corner of her eye. She'd never tell him. She'd have an abortion without him ever knowing. Lila stood expressionless, but like all women who'd been through this, she knew. She realized she was no longer first in his thoughts and hadn't been for a long as she could remember. Yet she still held hope and thought to herself, maybe he would understand. If only she could get beyond the walls of the fortress Sarah Connor had built around the man she still wanted to love.

James slipped into his coat and closed the closet door. He swept the remote up from the coffee table and turned the television off. "What do you think about going to Milo's?" He smiled placatingly.

"Sure James," Lila fought to fight the contempt in her voice, "Milo's would be nice."

James opened the door for Lila and tossed the remote onto the sofa. He failed to notice he had accidently turned the television back on again. As James locked the door behind them he was oblivioius to the report of breaking news; a possible terrorist bombing at the Security Trust Bank in downtown Los Angeles.


End file.
